Navigating the Borderlands: Brian McGilloway as Contemporary Cartographer of the Liminal in the Ulster Landscape

Set in the borderlands between Letterkenny and Derry-Londonderry, a landscape scarred by geological fold, river and cartographer’s pen, the Ulster crime novelist Brian McGilloway chronicles the hopes and fears of a contemporary society unable to escape a complicated history, redolent and entwined with the voices of its ‘ghosts of its past.’ Through his choice of chief protagonist, An Garda Síochána officer Benedict Devlin, McGilloway turns detective to critically investigate the both the seemingly straightforward and the unseen dwelling in the rural Ulster landscape. Following in the footsteps of Nordic and Tartan Noir in making commentary on current societ,y McGilloway recognises the importance of the past in trying to reach an understanding of the present. His critique however goes beyond criminal behaviour motivated primarily by politics or religion, allowing a deeper and more meaningful diagnosis of the ‘state of the nation’. Place, name and event become especially important in contextualising the liminality of McGilloway’s real rural border settings. In doing so, McGilloway continues in the rich tradition of Ulster poet such as Heaney, MacNiece, Muldoon and Hewitt in trying to rationalise the man-made amidst the elemental in the land of both the ‘Planter & The Gael.’ History, language, tradition and the sacral are all instruments of investigation in helping McGilloway present a revealing pathology and atlas of our times to his readers. Turning literary investigator, the author contends that there is much to learn from this physiography, not just for the borderlands region, but for the wider countryside and society beyond. Keywords Cultural Atlas, Crime Fiction, Place, Poetry, Rural.

Navigating and exploring the ASD-friendly landscape

As a society we have a responsibility to provide an inclusive built environment. For those with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) however, the world can be a frightening, difficult and confusing place. The challenge of integrating more fully into society can be distanced by an alienating built environment. This is particularly debilitating for younger children who can find themselves detached from learning and interaction with their peers by uncomfortable surroundings. Subsequently there has been a growing interest in promoting ASD-friendly environments, especially in a school setting. Strategies to date have generally followed a widely accepted reductionist or generalist approach. However, the authors now contend that there needs to be a greater discussion of what truly constitutes an ASD-friendly environment, in conjunction with investigating what strategies best articulate a progressive approach to supporting those, and especially the young, with ASD in our built environment. Hence this paper first introduces some of the challenges faced by those with ASD in trying to cope with their surroundings. It then outlines a triad of challenges to overcome when considering what truly constitutes an ASD-friendly environment. The authors then highlight the need and advantage of supporting change and adaption in our shared inhabited landscape through providing both choice and reassurance for the child with ASD. It is hoped that by increasing awareness and then questioning what genuinely constitutes an ASD-friendly environment, it might ultimately help facilitate greater inclusion of the ASD child into mainstream education and society at large.

A stacked Late Quaternary fluvio-periglacial sequence from the Axe valley, southern England with implications for landscape evolution and Palaeolithic archaeology

The current model of mid-latitude late Quaternary terrace sequences, is that they are uplift-driven but climatically controlled terrace staircases, relating to both regional-scale crustal and tectonic factors, and palaeohydrological variations forced by quasi-cyclic climatic conditions in the 100 K world (post Mid Pleistocene Transition). This model appears to hold for the majority of the river valleys draining into the English Channel which exhibit 8–15 terrace levels over approximately 60–100 m of altitudinal elevation. However, one valley, the Axe, has only one major morphological terrace and has long-been regarded as anomalous. This paper uses both conventional and novel stratigraphical methods (digital granulometry and terrestrial laser scanning) to show that this terrace is a stacked sedimentary sequence of 20–30 m thickness with a quasi-continuous (i.e. with hiatuses) pulsed, record of fluvial and periglacial sedimentation over at least the last 300–400 K yrs as determined principally by OSL dating of the upper two thirds of the sequence. Since uplift has been regional, there is no evidence of anomalous neotectonics, and climatic history must be comparable to the adjacent catchments (both of which have staircase sequences) a catchment-specific mechanism is required. The Axe is the only valley in North West Europe incised entirely into the near-horizontally bedded chert (crypto-crystalline quartz) and sand-rich Lower Cretaceous rocks creating a buried valley. Mapping of the valley slopes has identified many large landslide scars associated with past and present springs. It is proposed that these are thaw-slump scars and represent large hill-slope failures caused by Vauclausian water pressures and hydraulic fracturing of the chert during rapid permafrost melting. A simple 1D model of this thermokarstic process is used to explore this mechanism, and it is proposed that the resultant anomalously high input of chert and sand into the valley during terminations caused pulsed aggradation until the last termination. It is also proposed that interglacial and interstadial incision may have been prevented by the over-sized and interlocking nature of the sub-angular chert clasts until the Lateglacial when confinement of the river overcame this immobility threshold. One result of this hydrogeologically mediated valley evolution was to provide a sequence of proximal Palaeolithic archaeology over two MIS cycles. This study demonstrates that uplift tectonics and climate alone do not fully determine Quaternary valley evolution and that lithological and hydrogeological conditions are a fundamental cause of variation in terrestrial Quaternary records and landform evolution.

Stated preference methods and landscape ecology indicators: an example of transdisciplinarity in landscape economic valuation

This paper addresses the representation of landscape complexity in stated preferences research. It integrates landscape ecology and landscape economics and conducts the landscape analysis in a three-dimensional space to provide ecologically meaningful quantitative landscape indicators that are used as variables for the monetary valuation of landscape in a stated preferences study. Expected heterogeneity in taste intensity across respondents is addressed with a mixed logit model in Willingness to Pay space. Our methodology is applied to value, in monetary terms, the landscape of the Sorrento Peninsula in Italy, an area that has faced increasing pressure from urbanization affecting its traditional horticultural, herbaceous, and arboreal structure, with loss of biodiversity, and an increasing risk of landslides. We find that residents of the Sorrento Peninsula would prefer landscapes characterized by large open views and natural features. Residents also appear to dislike heterogeneous landscapes and the presence of lemon orchards and farmers' stewardship, which are associated with the current failure of protecting the traditional landscape. The outcomes suggest that the use of landscape ecology metrics in a stated preferences model may be an effective way to move forward integrated methodologies to better understand and represent landscape and its complexity.

Towards a positive cross-cultural lexicography: Enriching our emotional landscape through 216 ‘untranslatable’ words pertaining to well-being

Although much attention has been paid to culture-specific psychopathologies, there have been no comparable attempts to chart positive mental states that may be particular to certain cultures. This paper outlines the beginnings of a positive cross-cultural lexicography of ‘untranslatable’ words pertaining to wellbeing, culled from across the world’s languages. A quasi-systematic search uncovered 216 such terms. Using grounded theory, these words were organised into three categories: feelings (comprising positive and complex feelings); relationships (comprising intimacy and pro-sociality); and character (comprising personal resources and spirituality). The paper has two main aims. First, it aims to provide a window onto cultural differences in constructions of wellbeing, thereby enriching our understanding of wellbeing. Second, a more ambitious aim is that this lexicon may help expand the emotional vocabulary of English speakers (and indeed speakers of all languages), and consequently enrich their experiences of wellbeing. The paper concludes by setting out a research agenda to pursue these aims further.

Exploring the linguistic landscape: the case of the ‘Golden Triangle’ in the Algarve, Portugal

Studies of the linguistic landscape (LL) are concerned with language in its written form, in the public sphere; language that is visible to all through texts such as billboards and other public signs. The LL is such a taken-for-granted part of our everyday experience that its importance as a form of social practice is often overlooked. Taking a mixed methods approach to the case of the linguistic landscape of the ‘Golden Triangle’, an area of tourist resorts which is gradually becoming a residential area in the Algarve, Portugal, I suggest that the discursive construction of a place is partly achieved through the highly visible texts of the LL which may also impact upon the discursive construction of the collective identities of those who inhabit the place.

Landscape genetics of a seagrass species in a tidal mudflat lagoon

Tese de doutoramento, Ciências do Mar, da Terra e do Ambiente, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade do Algarve, 2015

Population and landscape genetics of the stone marten and red fox in Portugal : implications for conservation management of common carnivores

Tese de doutoramento, Biologia (Biologia da Conservação), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, 2015

The transformation of landscape as as aesthetic idear

The present study seeks to thoroughly investigate and delineate the concept alongside the transformation of landscape as an aesthetic idea. On the one side it runs that nature perceived as landscape remains nothing else but granted, evident or 'natural'. On yet another side, and to some fairly significant extend, this thesis identifies landscape as a sheer idea and concept that is shaped and (re-)mediated in an ongoing process. The thesis examines the role of the observer and brings into agreement that every landscape is a produce of creative mental processes. In brief outline, this approach provides a framework for identifying landscape as being inextricably linked with media from the very beginning of their social and cultural inception. As glowing examples for the paradigmatic shift of the classical subjective vision model culminating in the emergence of a new prototype, the camera obscura, together with the panorama, fortify the prevailing argument that the mode of human sense perception is organised and determined by earlier acquainted recognitions. In this matter, as each and every medium strive after accomplishment, then this accomplishment is substantially determined by overwhelming historic, as well as thriving cultural circumstances. In conclusive terms, this study seeks to show how landscape counts as content of a representation, while simultaneously being a very own medium that specifically carries social, geological as well as historic knowledge. In fact, modern vision shall therefore never be bound to any single format or process, rather it will have to always undergo procedures aiming at reshaping the perceivable. Landscape is playing out its major characteristic, specifically that of being, in essence, a purely intellectual, virtual and synthetic product