TPEA good practice guide: lessons for cross-border MSP from transboundary planning in the European Atlantic

This Good Practice Guide is the outcome of a project co-funded by the European Commission (DG Mare) called Transboundary Planning in the European Atlantic (TPEA), which ran from December 2012 to May 2014. The aim of the project was to demonstrate approaches to transboundary maritime spatial planning (MSP) in the European Atlantic region. This is one of a series of projects exploring the opportunities and challenges of carrying out cross-border MSP in Europe’s regional seas, making connections with integrated coastal management (ICM). TPEA focused on two pilot areas: one involving Portugal and Spain and the other Ireland and the United Kingdom. Despite distinct identities in the region relating to different traditions of planning and stages of MSP implementation, TPEA worked towards a commonly-agreed approach to transboundary MSP and developed principles of cross-border working which it is hoped will be of wider benefit. This guide presents these principles, illustrated with examples from the TPEA project.

The EU referendum in Northern Ireland: closing borders, re-opening border debates

The UK decision to leave the European Union (EU) following a referendum in June 2016 fundamentally alters the country's relationship with the EU, with its European neighbours, with the rest of the world and potentially with its own constituent units. It is clear that different parts of the UK will be impacted differently by this decision and by the unfolding exit terms and process. In this context, Northern Ireland is considered to be particularly vulnerable. This article examines the referendum campaign in Northern Ireland by detailing input from the Northern Ireland administration, political parties, civil society and external figures. The article suggests that the overall referendum campaign in Northern Ireland was hamstrung by the opposing positions taken by key political protagonists, particularly Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). This produced a challenging context for the referendum debate in Northern Ireland. The post-referendum period has also been marked by persistent differences in relation to how best to approach specific Northern Ireland issues and challenges. A continued absence of clear positions and a lack of contingency planning underline a poor level of preparedness for future political developments.

Compilation and analysis of integrated regional input-output tables for NUTS 2 regions in Ireland

In 1966, Roy Geary, Director of the ESRI, noted “the absence of any kind of import and export statistics for regions is a grave lacuna” and further noted that if regional analyses were to be developed then regional Input-Output Tables must be put on the “regular statistical assembly line”. Forty-five years later, the lacuna lamented by Geary still exists and remains the most significant challenge to the construction of regional Input-Output Tables in Ireland. The continued paucity of sufficient regional data to compile effective regional Supply and Use and Input-Output Tables has retarded the capacity to construct sound regional economic models and provide a robust evidence base with which to formulate and assess regional policy. This study makes a first step towards addressing this gap by presenting the first set of fully integrated, symmetric, Supply and Use and domestic Input-Output Tables compiled for the NUTS 2 regions in Ireland: The Border, Midland and Western region and the Southern & Eastern region. These tables are general purpose in nature and are consistent fully with the official national Supply & Use and Input-Output Tables, and the regional accounts. The tables are constructed using a survey-based or bottom-up approach rather than employing modelling techniques, yielding more robust and credible tables. These tables are used to present a descriptive statistical analysis of the two administrative NUTS 2 regions in Ireland, drawing particular attention to the underlying structural differences of regional trade balances and composition of Gross Value Added in those regions. By deriving regional employment multipliers, Domestic Demand Employment matrices are constructed to quantify and illustrate the supply chain impact on employment. In the final part of the study, the predictive capability of the Input-Output framework is tested over two time periods. For both periods, the static Leontief production function assumptions are relaxed to allow for labour productivity. Comparative results from this experiment are presented.

Politically motivated former prisoner groups: community activism and conflict transformation

Aims and objectives: This study represents the first sustained quantitative and qualitative attempt to involve both Republicans and Loyalists in an investigation of the impact of imprisonment and the role of politically motivated former prisoners in the process of conflict transformation in Northern Ireland. The overall aim of the project is to examine the ways in which groups of former prisoners are involved in peace-building and conflict transformation work and to evaluate the constraints and impediments placed upon their activities by the effects of the imprisonment process, politically motivated release and residual criminalisation. In pursuing the evaluation of the role of politically motivated former prisoners working within and without their own communities, the research has six specific objectives: To trace the evolution and development of former prisoner groups; To evaluate the impacts of imprisonment and release on the personal lives of former prisoners; To assess the constraints imposed on former prisoners as agents of change by the residual criminalisation arising from their status; To determine the potential of the former prisoner community in challenging intra-community tensions and evaluate their potential and actual contribution to conflict transformation at the inter-community level; To compare and contrast the effectiveness of Loyalist and Republican former prisoners as agents of change within their own communities; To explore the notion of former prisoners as agents of social and communal transformation within broader political processes through grounding the knowledge and practical experience of the former prisoner community within the broader conceptual context of conflict transformation.

Development of inversion-mode and junctionless Indium-Gallium-Arsenide MOSFETs

This PhD covers the development of planar inversion-mode and junctionless Al2O3/In0.53Ga0.47As metal-oxidesemiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs). An implant activation anneal was developed for the formation of the source and drain (S/D) of the inversionmode MOSFET. Fabricated inversion-mode devices were used as test vehicles to investigate the impact of forming gas annealing (FGA) on device performance. Following FGA, the devices exhibited a subthreshold swing (SS) of 150mV/dec., an ION/IOFF of 104 and the transconductance, drive current and peak effective mobility increased by 29%, 25% and 15%, respectively. An alternative technique, based on the fitting of the measured full-gate capacitance vs gate voltage using a selfconsistent Poisson-Schrödinger solver, was developed to extract the trap energy profile across the full In0.53Ga0.47As bandgap and beyond. A multi-frequency inversion-charge pumping approach was proposed to (1) study the traps located at energy levels aligned with the In0.53Ga0.47As conduction band and (2) separate the trapped charge and mobile charge contributions. The analysis revealed an effective mobility (μeff) peaking at ~2850cm2/V.s for an inversion-charge density (Ninv) = 7*1011cm2 and rapidly decreasing to ~600cm2/V.s for Ninv = 1*1013 cm2, consistent with a μeff limited by surface roughness scattering. Atomic force microscopy measurements confirmed a large surface roughness of 1.95±0.28nm on the In0.53Ga0.47As channel caused by the S/D activation anneal. In order to circumvent the issue relative to S/D formation, a junctionless In0.53Ga0.47As device was developed. A digital etch was used to thin the In0.53Ga0.47As channel and investigate the impact of channel thickness (tInGaAs) on device performance. Scaling of the SS with tInGaAs was observed for tInGaAs going from 24 to 16nm, yielding a SS of 115mV/dec. for tInGaAs = 16nm. Flat-band μeff values of 2130 and 1975cm2/V.s were extracted on devices with tInGaAs of 24 and 20nm, respectively

Chicana poetics: genre and style in Gloria Anzaldúa and Lorna Dee Cervantes

This thesis conducts a formal study of the poetry of Gloria Anzaldúa and Lorna Dee Cervantes, placing their work in dialogue with genre and style. These two Chicana poets are exemplary of politicised experimentation with poetics, underpinned by a keen awareness of the rich history of form, genre and style. In the work of each poet, two poetic modes are examined: one traditional, and one experimental. Anzaldúa’s uses of the dramatic monologue as a border genre, and her construction of [auto]poetics, stemming from her multi-genre, autobiographical approach to writing, are considered. Cervantes’s complex approach to the construction of docupoetics that achieves a depth of field in terms of merging a multidimensional approach to aesthetics with highly politicised transnational content, as well as her engagement with the longstanding poetic of elegy via various formal points of entry, is investigated. These poetic modes are primarily explored via close readings, supported by a multidisciplinary framework that includes Anzaldúa’s feminist theories of identity and writing, abjection theory, postcolonialism, and transnationalism. Overall, these four key areas demonstrate the ways in which aesthetics is a crucial consideration in the exploration of the broader issues of content and context in Chicana poetry.