Ontological representation of design science research publications

A search result provided by existing digital library and web search systems typically comprises only a prioritised list of possible publications or web pages that meet the search criteria, possibly with excerpts and possibly with search terms highlighted. The research in progress reported in this poster contributes to a larger research effort to provide a readable summary of search results that synthesise relevant publications or web pages to provide results that meet four C’s: comprehensive, concise, coherent, and correct, as a more useful alternative to un-synthesised result lists. The scope of this research is limited to searching for and synthesising Design Science Research (DSR) publications that present the results of DSR, as an example problem domain.

The Kyoto School and Confucianism: a Confucian reading of the philosophy of history and political thought of Masaaki Kosaka

This dissertation examines the philosophy of Masaaki Kōsaka (1900-1969) from the East Asian perspective of Confucianism, which I believe is the most appropriate moral paradigm for comprehending his political speculations. Although largely neglected in post-war scholarship, Kōsaka was a prominent member of the Kyoto School during the 1930s and 40s. This was a group of Japanese thinkers strongly associated with the philosophies of Kitarō Nishida and Hajime Tanabe. Kōsaka is now best known for his participation in the three Chūō Kōron symposia held in 1941 and 1942. These meetings have been routinely denounced by liberal historians due to the participants’ support for the Pacific War and the Co-Prosperity Sphere. However, many of these liberal portrayals have failed to take into account the full extent of the group’s resistance to the military junta of Hideki Tōjō. Adopting the methods and techniques of the empirical disciplines of academic history and Orientalism, I develop an interpretative framework that is more receptive to the political values that mattered to Kōsaka as a Confucian inspired intellectual. This has necessitated the rejection of moral history, which typically prioritises modern liberal values brought a priori to the historical record of wartime Japan, as well as recognition of the different ontological foundations that inform the unique political theories of the East Asian intellectual tradition. Reinforced by the prior research of Michel Dalissier and Graham Parkes, as well as my own reading of the Confucian canon, I adopt David Williams’s thesis of ‘Confucian Revolution’ as my principle schema of interpretation. This, I believe, is better able to reconcile Kōsaka’s support for the war with his strong condemnation of the imperialist practices of the Japanese military. Moreover, acknowledging the importance of Confucianism allows us to fully appreciate Kōsaka’s strong affinity for Kant’s practical metaphysics, Hegel’s political philosophy and Ranke’s historiography.

Performing Irishness: translations of Irish drama for the Galician stage (1921-2011)

This PhD thesis provides a detailed analysis of the role and significance of Irish drama in the Galician cultural context, from the early twentieth century onwards, through scrutiny of key works translated, adapted and mediated for the Galician stage. Drawing primarily on the theoretical framework of Descriptive Translation Studies, informed by Polysystems theory (Toury), Post-colonial Translation, research on processes of cultural translation (Bassnett, Lefevere, Venuti, Aaltonen), as well as careful comparative attention to the specificities of literary, theatrical and cultural context, I examine the factors governing the incorporation, reshaping and reception of twentieth century Irish plays in Galicia in order to produce a cultural history of the representation of Ireland on the Galician stage. Focusing on the five key periods I have identified in the translation/reception of Irish drama in Galicia, as represented in specific versions of plays by Yeats, Synge, O’Casey and McDonagh, my thesis examines in detail the particular linguistic, sociopolitical, theatrical and cultural dimensions of each rewriting and/or restaging in order to uncover the ways in which Irish identity is perceived, constructed and performed in a Galician context. Moving beyond the literary, historical and philological focus of existing studies of the reception of Irish literature and foreign dramatic texts in the Galician system, my own approach draws on Theatre and Performance Studies to attend also to the performative dimension of these processes of cultural adaptation and reception, giving full account of the different agents involved in theatre translation as a rich and complex process of multivalent cultural mediation.