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Item Embargo Drotári. The wireworkers of Trencsén and the German work-permit system (1871-1914)(Liverpool University Press, 2026-12-31)Item Open Access Water bonds to mitigate environmental risks in Brazil: integrating a local-based approach in sustainable finance for water(Northumbria University, 2026-01-30)This report summarises the outcomes of an expert workshop and local participatory stakeholder engagement held in Belém, Brazil, in June 2025, focused on the integration of sustainable finance, water governance, and environmental risk assessment. The event brought together academics, public authorities, financial practitioners, and community representatives to examine how green, social, and water-related bonds can more effectively support sustainable water infrastructure investment. Expert discussions highlighted the growing demand for thematic bonds, alongside persistent challenges related to weak impact evaluation, limited post-issuance reporting, and insufficient integration of environmental risk into project design. Contributions from Brazil, the United Kingdom, and Chile emphasised the importance of transparency, credible disclosure, and natural capital accounting in aligning financial governance with sustainability objectives. Institutional tensions between water regulation, environmental licensing, and community participation were identified as key barriers to effective implementation. Participatory discussions with 54 local stakeholders revealed significant environmental risks linked to inadequate waste management, unregulated groundwater extraction, weak monitoring capacity, and policy discontinuity, despite the abundant water resources in the Amazon. Participants also highlighted community-based practices such as rainwater harvesting, flood adaptation, and participatory monitoring as practical, locally grounded strategies for resilience and sustainable water use. Across both expert and community sessions, a shared concern emerged regarding the limitations of current sustainable finance approaches, which often prioritise regulatory compliance and market credibility over long-term ecosystem resilience. The workshop reinforced the need to integrate environmental and social risk assessment early in the investment lifecycle and to better align market-oriented financial instruments with impact-oriented governance approaches. The Belém workshop represents a key milestone in developing a context-sensitive framework for environmental risk assessment in green finance. The insights generated aim to inform a subsequent phase of research focused on refining the framework through additional empirical validation, stakeholder engagement, and policy dialogue, to support water-related investments that are financially viable, socially equitable, and ecologically sustainable.Item Open Access Process driven self-organisation in laser powder bed fusion of copper coated diamond(Elsevier, 2026-04-06)Laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) of metal-diamond composites remains fundamentally limited by the extreme thermal gradients imposed by diamond. Here we demonstrate, for the first time, the LPBF of copper-coated diamond revealing previously inaccessible melt-pool behaviour. A narrow conduction-mode process window (150–220 J/mm3) where single tracks exhibit <2.5% porosity and predictable geometric scaling was identified. Systematic single-track mapping reveals a unified thermo-fluidic response described by a vector regression model linking track geometry, porosity, particle assimilation and bonding to energy density. Multi-track experiments uncover six distinct morphological regimes, including a remarkable and previously unreported self-organised sub-micron porous lattice that emerges exclusively within a narrow 113–141 J/mm3 window. This polygonal network (0.5–2 μm pores; 0.2–0.8 μm ligaments) forms through capillary-driven breakup of transient molten Cu films confined between overlapping tracks. By coupling classical van-der-Waals thin-film instability theory to LPBF specific melt-pool constraints, we derive the Robinson-Arjunan scaling law that predicts the lattice wavelength consistent with experimental observations. At higher energies, lattice coarsening, densification and keyhole-dominated porosity emerge. The results establish LPBF as not merely a consolidation route but a self-organisation platform for metal-diamond systems enabling engineered sub-micron architectures and tunable interfacial morphologies unattainable in monolithic metals. This work opens a new domain in additive manufacturing where feedstock design and melt-pool physics jointly govern hierarchical microstructure formation.Item Embargo Construction craftspeople apprenticeship in Nigeria: from the lens of apprentices(Taylor & Francis, 2026-04-07)The construction industry is facing a shortage of skilled workers worldwide. This shortfall can be addressed through the construction craftspeople apprenticeship system, which has not received significant attention in developing countries like Nigeria. This study aims to explore the experiences of apprentices in construction craftspeople apprenticeship programs in Nigeria. Data were collected using questionnaire surveys and interviews. Astructured questionnaire was distributed to thirty-two apprentices across two construction craftspeople apprenticeship programs in Nigeria, and sixteen interviews were conducted. The survey data were analyzed using the Relative Importance Index (RII), while data from the interview were analyzed using content analysis to identify key themes. The findings revealed that the primary motivators for individuals to pursue apprenticeships in the construction sector include the desire to work in the construction industry, the opportunity for skills and ability development, and the opportunity for income and associated benefits. Conversely, the major challenges faced by apprentices include limited job availability after completing their apprenticeship, poor or nonpayment of allowances, redundancy during training and inadequate training quality. These findings are significant for construction stakeholders as they highlight the need for strategies to encourage young peoItem Open Access Stir it up: interdisciplinary popular musicology and creative industries(University of Wolverhampton, 2026)This PhD by Published Works represents “a coherent portfolio of published work, with appropriate currency”, that is within the regulatory submission eligibility timeline of the University of Wolverhampton. The contextual, introductory writing identifies and addresses the unifying theme across the published works submitted as part of this thesis. Firstly: that the published works represent critical engagements with post-1968 British and American cultural artefacts and scenes in which Popular Music predominantly figures. Secondly: that these critical engagements seek to identify the political import and functions of these artefacts and scenes in the light of the failure of the grand revolutionary project of 1968, which had prompted a rethinking of the role of culture in anglophone society. The critical analyses of these cultural artefacts and scenes in the wake of the failure of 1968, in the published works – artefact and scenes which are here read as recalibrated to a “stirring up” of a post-1968 conscience – represents the contribution to knowledge of this thesis. The interdisciplinary nature of the critical engagements of these published works is identified as representing an enhanced methodology that is appropriate for such material. This interdisciplinarity and enhanced methodology has allowed for a consideration of media (both recorded and live) and related artefacts as intrinsic to an understanding of, and the reach of, popular music; liveness and performance as intrinsic to modern pop, and the need to theorise this connection; a consideration of the importance of “peripheral” figures such as the disc jockey and impresario in popular music cultures and scenes; ontologies of liveness in terms of virtuality and electronic dance music (EDM); and the notion of a wider, zeitgeist-calibrated music scene, and its ideological assumptions. This interdisciplinarity is considered in respect to historic directions in interdisciplinary Popular Musicology, and to interdisciplinarity itself, via a series of definitions and conceptions found in academic writing, personal experiences, and the ways in which interdisciplinarity is understood and assessed as part of the periodic Research Excellence Framework exercise. The thesis argues, with respect to the published work submitted, for a breaking with the general tendency of relaying innovative interdisciplinary methodologies back into the one discipline of Popular Musicology, in favour of placing the originality of the findings of the published works in the context of the relatively new discipline of Creative Industries. The thesis then proactively repositions the submitted work in terms of new horizons of academic engagement. And, to this end, definitions of the Creative Industries are scoped, both academic and governmental. Individual summaries and commentaries on the published works are included, which seek to draw out and critique their interdisciplinarity, contribution to knowledge, and orientations to Creative Industries. The latter element has determined the organisation of the portfolio of published works, which is grouped into four sections: 1) Scenes, and new markets… and their discontents; 2) Buying (into) cultural cachet; 3) The problem of tainted, but paradigm-shifting, artefacts; and, 4) Intimations of multiplatform world-making.
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