It is as close to living the life of a monk as you can get, without actually setting foot in a monastery

Thanks are due to the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for the funding that made this research possible. By extension I’d like to offer my thanks to all the staff of the Department of Mathematics & Statistics at the University of Surrey.

My supervisor, Dr Peter Hydon, is a remarkable, thoughtful and kind man to whom I would like to offer my sincerest gratitude for inspiration in fields well beyond that of mathematics.

Of course, my parents have offered tremendous support and encouragement, as have Jessie and her family, and my thanks naturally go to them all.

Finally, for any postgraduate student that happens upon these acknowledgements, may I assure you of the truth of a fellow student’s works on the practise of research – that it is as close to living the life of a monk as you can get, without actually setting foot in a monastery. I should also point that it’s a lot of fun, too.

Contributor: @rich_w

Source: Watts, R (2005) Determining the symmetries of initial-value problems, MPhil, University of Surrey

If you could see me now, I know you would be so proud. If I can be even half as courageous as you, I’ll do well.

With greatest thanks to my husband Daniel. We both know I could not have done this without you. Thank you for keeping me sane – a feat that easily exceeds that of researching a doctorate. Love you to bursting.

To Chris Griffin and Dawn Robins, sisters and fellow students, for love and understanding at every stage. To my brother, Al Robins, for practical gems of advice such as “Just get on with it, Sis”. Thank you Bruv, I hope you’ll be as proud of me as I am of you. To my Mum, Teressa Robins, thank you for your unwavering love and your faith in me. To my Dad, the late Christopher Robins: If you could see me now, I know you would be so proud. If I can be even half as courageous as you, I’ll do well.

To my lab-mates Lucy Chambers and Natalie Gould, thank you for your wonderful patience, continual support and warm humour – I am lucky to have made such great friends. To Aurelie Lesdema, thank you for the practical help you so cheerfully provided, and for your infectious smile. To Pennie Ingram, Elly Adams, and all in the Psychology school office: thank you for everything you do behind the scenes to make life easier for us.

To Janet Collett, Martin Eve, Rachel Entwistle, Tish Marrable, Sarah Pannell, Jannie Roed and Liz Thackray: thank you for the pep-talks, cups of tea, hugs, sound advice, encouragement and kicks-up-the-backside. All administered with impeccable judgement and timing. To Craig Haslop and Chris Kempshall, for the wonderful camaraderie as bizarrely we find ourselves approaching the finishing line together, and for educating me in subversive ways to ‘stick it to the man’.

I wish to express my deep gratitude to the academics that have shaped my curious career path so far. My thanks go to Dr Ray White, for sparking and cultivating my interest in psychology. To Dr Tamzin Ripley, for being a cracking role model, and to Professor Chris Darwin for down-to-earth pragmatism. To Dr. Anne Hole for boundless empathy and sensible advice. To Professor Pete Clifton and Professor Marion Hetherington for such a positive viva experience in the face of so many null results. Finally, and most of all, to my supervisor, Professor Martin Yeomans, for believing in me, and for all the support, encouragement and cajoling that was necessary to make me understand I could do this. Thank you.

This research was funded by a BBSRC Case studentship with Mars UK in the role of industrial partner. I wish to thank both organisations, and Penny and Francesca at Mars UK in particular, for providing me with insight into the industry way of doing things, and for being ever positive in the face of experiments that didn’t go quite as we had hoped.

A final thanks must go to Keith Blount, developer of Scrivener (probably the best writer’s software in the world) and Scapple for envisioning and creating outstanding software and tech support that goes beyond the extra mile.

Contributor: @SarahR_H
Source: Robins-Hobden, Sarah Louise (2012) Sensory-specific satiety and repeated exposure to novel snack foods: short- and long-term changes in food pleasantness. Doctoral thesis, University of Sussex.

The biggest of all the giants is my Dad

Standing on the shoulders of giants…

Back in 2009, I remember discussing my initial attempt at a literature review with Sal Craig when he asked me, ‘Who are your giants? Whose shoulders are you going to stand on?’. To paraphrase Newton if I have seen any further, it is by standing on the shoulders of my giants, of whom there are several. To them all, I am extremely grateful to for your help, support and encouragement over the last four years.

To my industrial giants Buro Happold, thank you for the generous sponsorship. Thank you to all those I worked with over the last four years throughout my engineering doctorate (EngD). To Lindsey, Christine and Celia for having the patience to read my work. Special thanks have to go Sal and Neil for their advice in the earlier years of the research. Thanks to Zack for all he taught me while completing his own EngD. Mark, thank you for helping me through all the EngD modules and accompanying me on this journey. And to Jonathan, a huge thank you for all the proof reading, cups of tea and the friendship extended to me since the day I started back in 2008.

In the academic world I wish to thank the ESPRC for funding the EngD programme, which I was fortunate to be a part of. Thank you to Eleanor Van Den Heuvel and Linda Paul at Brunel University for helping me coordinate the participants and usability studies. I’d also like to thank all of the study participants who gave up their time to help me, without whom this research would not have been possible.

Within the school of Engineering and Design, Brunel University, I’d like to thank Dr Hua Dong for her invaluable advice throughout the doctorate. Dr Mark Young thank you for the statistical help and advice on study design. Dan Lockton, thank you for pointing me in the right direction and for continuing to encourage me throughout. Your work has been an inspiration as to what research work can achieve. Professor David Harrison, thank you for providing me with the opportunity to undertake the EngD in the first place and for your continued support and reassurance over the years.

The biggest of all the giants is my Dad, who I cannot thank enough for the opportunities he has given me, the constant encouragement he provides and for always being there for me. I am so fortunate to have a champion like you, who is supportive and motivating in equal measures. Alongside my Dad there is Catherine, my sister Emma and the rest of my family in South Africa, thank you for being in my life.

To my friends Julia, Anna, Kat, Anna, and Sarah – thank you for your continued friendship, support, hugs, skype chats, laughs and cups of tea along the way. David, thank you for taking the time to proof read this thesis, your input was invaluable. Thank you Ferg, for all the conversations, philosophical debates and inspirational conversations over coffee and cake. I am truly lucky to count you amongst my friends. And Tim, thank you for all the support and encouragement you give me, and the patience and unwavering faith you have in me. You believe in me even when I don’t believe in myself. For that I am eternally grateful. Love, always.

I would like to dedicate this thesis to the memory of my mother, Jenny Combe (1948-1994), who is a constant source of inspiration. I hope she would have been proud.

Contributor: @niccombe

Source: EngD, Brunel University, 2012

 

Have always taught me but more importantly shown me that anything is possible

Darin Barney is an inventive, inspiring and courageous scholar who doesn’t shy away from struggle and stands up for what he believes in. I have been in luck to enjoy the supervision of someone I admire as a thinker, as well as a human being. Will Straw is a compassionate mentor, impassioned teacher, and loyal friend. Jenny Burman, Carrie Rentschler, and Jonathan Sterne are important thinkers who have been nothing but helpful and obliging to me over the past two years. My collaborations with these professors in the Graduate Programme in Communication Studies have been the most rewarding of my academic career, and I owe each of them endless thanks. I would also like to recognize my past teachers, whose influence is palpable throughout this and all my work: Barbara Godard, Stephen Guy-Bray, Kate Sirluck, Janice Stewart, Priscila Uppal, and Lorraine Weir.

I spent a lot of my time at McGill teaching in the Cultural Studies program, where I thoroughly enjoyed working for and with Derek Nystrom and Alanna Thain. Teaching these courses not only developed my skills as an educator, but also sharpened the focus of my own scholarship in important and often surprising ways. Throughout these courses, I was uniquely privileged to work for and with outstanding young intellectuals, each of whom has eased my confidence that we can and will build a better world. Specifically, I would like to recognize Kate Bass, Clayton Beugeling, Laura Biggar, Chloe Castonguay, Samantha Chrisanthus, Tess Edmonson, Zoe Engberg, Martha Hunter, Eli Keshet, Olivia Khazam, Daeun Kim, Justin Linds, François Macdonald, Michelle MacKinnon, Natania Marcus, Michael Marotti, Cameron McKeich, Holly Millar, Adam Nanji, Tarek Simon, Caylin Smith, Chrys Vilvang, Kelsey White, and especially Danny Wilson.

My Mom and Dad, Gregory and Elizabeth Sutton, have always taught me but more importantly shown me that anything is possible. I owe them more thanks than I can ever put into words, as I do the rest of my family – Edith Bruton, Lara Sutton and Geoff Turner, Adam Sutton and Jane Castillo, and Phoebe and Annabel Turner for their limitless care, support, and confidence.

I am a better person and scholar for the friends I made while at York and McGill, especially Nav Alang, Don Beith, David Borkenhagen, Suzanne Bouclin, Andrea Braithwaite, Matt Cornett, Ryan Diduck, Tara Elliott, Margo Gouley, Enoch Guimond, Dave Hollingshead, John Hoskins, Gregory Ko, Natalie Kouri-Towe, Kate MacKay, Shannon Meek, Adrien Scheffer Meubus, Michele Orain, Justin Pfefferle, Kyle Purves, Lilian Radovac, Scott Scambler, Anita Slominska, Shiloh Whitney, Julia Wright, Kat Wrobel, Heike Zieher, and the rest of the False Consciousness All Stars. In particular, I would like to recognize our Thursday lunch group, where mostly gossip but sometimes serious work was shared: thanks to Morgan Charles, Paulina Mickewicz, Heather Mills, Yasmine Nachabe, and Cayley Sorochan.

I have many more personal thanks to give: to Andrew Brett, whose politics and agitations are as admirable as they are inspiring and necessary and totally dead on; to Andrew Brudz, for his gentlemanly hospitality whenever I’m in Toronto; to Kendra Coulter, as without her influence I never would’ve started writing about neoliberalism; to Holly Foxcroft, for her always timely friendship despite my incessant tardiness; to Nathan Gauld, for his ambitious love; to Carey Hill, for teaching me to feel how to make a better world; to Parker McLean and his poems, both of which changed my life once; to Jared Sager, who has enough friends but bonded with me over baseball, anyway; to Rick Telfer and Jeffrey Andrus, for their joint ability to make every night Friday night; to Lara Vlach, for more than a decade of loyal friendship; and to Michael-Oliver Harding, for showing up just as I was finishing this.

I would not think the way I do were it not for Karen Ward. I try to do justice by her every day.

Rick Hink is probably the person who contributed most to this author and his research over the past two years. I am grateful for the time I happened to enjoy his influence.

Gaïa Orain provides the coziest love of anyone I have ever met. To me, time with her is marked on Montréal’s cartography.

Elaine Chukan Brown is courageous, magnificent, resilient, dedicated to the world, and right about everything. I cherish the time we have spent thinking together and look forward to all our future collaborations. After all, we are attached at the soul.

Because of one night when we sat on the water taxi dock after the Dufferin closed, Adam Wojtowicz and I move across the country for each other. Words can’t express the amount of heart and gratitude I have for him.

I would like to thank Aaron Hay for his lessons in constancy, citizenship, and justice. I think he may have more goodness in him than all of us combined.

Jordan Jenkins and I have been teaching each other how to live in the world for a number of years, now. He moved in upstairs while I was writing this, and since then, everything about me and everything I do has been better.

A few minutes after I moved to Montréal, I met Christopher Ellis, and since then, he has been my partner in crime. Our constant dialogue about our research, our lives, about reasonable accommodation, and about poutine was unexpected, and has been so thoroughly fulfilling. This thesis is cut to the measure of his friendship, so I must thank him most of all.

P.S.
Montréal, Québec
August 2009

For my Uncle Doug, dead at 66.

Contributor: Paul Sutton
Source: Sutton P (2009) Smoking is a Socialist Issue: Health Promotion and Neoliberal Politics in Canada, MA, McGill University

Many friends in the Chemistry department who have provided help, advice, and the occasional chemical

This work would not have been possible without the financial support of the University of Bath and the EPSRC.

I would like to thank my supervisors, Dr. Andy Burrows, Dr. Sean Rigby and Dr. Tim Mays, for their help and guidance and many hours worth of thesis corrections. Thanks also to Dr. Mary Mahon for her help with crystallography and structure characterisation, Dr. John Lowe for his help with NMR, Dr. Anneke Lubben for help with Mass Spectrometry and Fernando Acosta, Dr. Li Min Chua and Elenica Shiko for their help with gas adsorption studies. I’d also like to thank Russell Barlow and Alan Carver for analysing the hundreds of TGA and CHN samples I have submitted over the last 3.5 years.

I would like to acknowledge members of the Burrows, Rigby and Mays groups, both past and present. In particular Anna Stevenson, who has been a colleague and friend for the past 7.5 years and who has put up with my endless crystallography questions. Viorica Pop and Luke Keenan who have provided help and friendship in the lab for the past few years. Ian Hitchcock, Anna Hruzewicz-Kołodziejczyk and Dr. Valeska Ting for their help with gas adsorption studies and Nuno Bimbo for his supply of interesting papers. Dr. Chris Richardson, Dr. Mathi Kandiah, Dr. Andy Kirk, Dr. Kevin Cassar, Dr. Ayi Anyama Ayi, Dr. Dongmei Jiang and Dr. Simon Brayshaw for help and advice over the years. The project students in the Burrows lab over the past few years, who have all provided useful comments as well as entertaining chats in the office; Alberto Hernan, Tom Lake, David Kelly, Katie Renouf, Kirsty Le Marquand, Greg Stidder, Rhodri Owen, Ines Collings, Rosie Lockyer, Gemma Gaines, Siobhan Kahn, Naomi Stubbs, Jay Ellis, Ben Hodges, Dave McClymont and in particular David Hodgson for his work on the diphenylacetylene-4,4’-dicarboxylate structures.

There are many friends in the Chemistry department who have provided help, advice, and the occasional chemical. Owen Cox has been invaluable for advice on organic chemistry and Paul Weaver for his IT help. Thanks to Chris Hawkins, Chrissie Cooper, Callum Keir, David Cousins, Hannah Edwards, Maria Zhelyazkova, Dr. Gareth Lamb, Emma Whitelaw, Carlo Di Iulio, Chris Ready, Kirsty Barber, David Jamieson, Dr. Stephen Flower and in particular Andrew Loftus, who has never complained about having to listen to my frustrations and always encouraged me. I would also like to thank all my friends outside of Chemistry for their advice and support, there are far too many to list, but particular mention goes to Annabel Heath, who has provided a supportive ear for the past 9.5 years. My family also deserve thanks for their continued love and support.

I would like to dedicate this work to my grandmother, Janet Bedwell, who died on July 17th 2010, and who has always been my hero and my greatest supporter.

Contributor: @laurafisher1985
Source: PhD, University of Bath, 2011

Thank you for all the face rubs

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It’s amazing to sit and think how many people over the past three and a half years, or one thousand, two hundred and sixteen days to be more precise, have contributed to, or supported my own motivation to complete this MPhil, and it’s even more difficult to attempt to acknowledge all those who have contributed to this process in other ways over that time, or even before it started. However,

THROUGHOUT

To Mum and Dad, I’m never totally sure that you got it (yet), and maybe that’s unfair, but it didn’t stop you always putting up with my rants about it, or stop you being understanding of the knock on impact that this work has had on everything else over the past three and a bit years, so thank you for that. I suppose without the education and upbringing you both have given me none of this would have even got started. Boodle, I knew somewhere deep down that despite being the younger sister and despite me having a head start on you in life you were going to beat me to these letters after my name! You did of course! Thank you for all your support along the way and glad we’ve both got there now! I’d also like to say a massive thank you to Steve and Jill Blount (old enough to be my parents…I mean, honorary parents!) for your support on numerous weekends in the early days of this process. If it wasn’t for you both back in the winter of 2003/2004, introducing me to coffee and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and teaching me to ski properly, I don’t think my brain would have ever started working in the way that it has since. You (and everyone else) can be the judge as to whether on balance that’s been a good thing, but seriously you helped me motivate myself to something better in so many ways back then and you continue to be an inspiration to me – thank you!

THE TWITTERSPHERE (NOVEMBER, 2008 – PRESENT)

It’s entirely fair to say that this thesis wouldn’t exist without Twitter so Biz, Jack and Evan, thanks. It is of course ironic that as a result of a medium that limits messages to 140 characters, the world is now bequeathed with this 524,884+ character, 77,000 word monstrosity, but it is less about the length of those tweets and more about the people and ideas with whom and with which I was able to connect throughout this process for which I’m truly grateful. Particularly to the following individuals, in no particular order, @georgejulian, @segelstrom, @rufflemuffin, @redjotter, @designthinkers, @laura_grant, @lixindex, @mrstickdorn, @choosenick, @meanestindian, @syamant, @satumiettinen, @designersaccord, @mattcurrienz, @Hellibop, @jamin, @ylvalindberg, @iterations, (Mr!) @jakoblies, @ninalysbakken,  @adamstjohn, @wimrampen, @grahamhill, @apolaine, @danlockton, @niccombe, @shlmld, @ninaksimon, @ideum and countless others. It does unfortunately feel, to quote The Corries, that “those days are passed now, and in the past they must remain”. But they were great whilst they lasted and we are all still connected so, it might not feel like 2009 again, but who knows what could happen in future… I’d also like to give a special nod at this point to Hugh Dubberly without whose work, this thesis might not exist, or, without which this thesis would most definitely have taken on a very different, and far less valuable form. I put this here, as without Twitter I’m fairly sure I might never have discovered Dubberly’s work. #legend #thankyou.

In addition to their mention above, I’d also like to take the time to say a massive thanks to Marc Stickdorn and Jakob Schneider for their work on This is Service Design Thinking and for enabling me to be part of that project and contribute to it. It has been massively reassuring in the latter stages of this process to know that at least a couple of people believed in my work on a professional basis so thank you both gentlemen, the subsequent success of TISDT is a testament to you both and all your hard work. I’d also like to thank Renato Troncon, whom I got to know better as part of that process, for affirming my conviction of the relationship and the importance of philosophy within design, and of the importance of a philosophy of design, particularly when no one else seemed to take this seriously – thank you!

BRUNEL UNIVERSITY (SEPTEMBER 2008 – FEBRUARY 2010)

Obviously, a big nod needs to go to Dr Mark Young at Brunel University in his role as supervisor of this MPhil and also in his role as chief instigator of the Ergonomics Real Design Exhibition project, cheers Mark! I’d also like to thank the rest of the Ergonomics Real Design Project team for their work and differing contributions and perspectives, all of which have in numerous positive ways supported and challenged this work, and the thinking and contribution of this thesis. Particularly I’d like to thank Dr Laura Grant and Dr Bella Williams from Laura Grant Associates for their help and support with the evaluation aspects of the project, and as they are referenced here, within this thesis as well. I’d also like to thank Colin Johnson from the EPSRC for his support and enthusiasm for the Ergonomics Real Design Project, Margaret Cabbage at the Design Museum for being such a pragmatist and making it all happen and Henrik at A2/SW/HK and Michael Marriott for bringing the yellow and black, co-created, systems-thinking, all other things antithetical to the Design Museum vision to life, and for providing it with the veneer of the London design establishment it evidently required to be as successful as it was, and which the rest of us quite evidently lacked, (and still do)! Also at The Design Museum, Dejan Sudjic and Gemma Curtin for fuelling my anti-motivation and conviction in the importance and relevance of a democratic approach to design, one day I hope you will see more clearly the participatory perspective, just as each day since I understand more clearly the validity of your own ‘legislating view’, in all sincerity your determination and vision for what is right for your current audience only greater forced me to develop my own idea of what, as a designer, my view and relationship with my users should be.

Also at Brunel, I’d like to thank Dr Hua Dong for her support as my second supervisor and for her advice throughout this process, your work ethic and ambition Hua is an inspiration and a case study in motivation itself! Farnaz, for being the first person I showed the Motivational Design Framework to and for not laughing me out of the room, your support and ideas in so may ways in those early stages was invaluable – kheili mamnoon! To the rest of the Inclusive Design Research Group at Brunel University and to Dr Marco Ajovalasit in the Human Centred Design Institute for allowing me to present in the HCDI Seminars in the early stages of this work, thank you.

Also at Brunel I’d like to acknowledge the huge role Dan Lockton and his PhD work on Architectures of Control / Design for Behaviour played in motivating my own belief in a number of things, 1) that it was possible for a designer or a design researcher to take on the concept of behaviour (or motivated behaviour) and for that to be worthwhile, 2) that it was possible for someone at Brunel to do postgraduate research of value and interest to the rest of the design community and 3) that it was a good idea to blog about some of that work. Seriously Dan, without you I wouldn’t have even got started, or believed it possible. What you achieved with your blog, and the means by which you made your work accessible to others over the course of your PhD says more about Public Engagement with Science and motivation than this thesis will ever manage to theorise or replicate. Thanks buddy.

There are a few other folk from my time at Brunel who I’d like to acknowledge, Graham and Lucy Ormiston, for putting up with me in the first year or so as a flatmate and (probably) lousy friend over that period and since. Perhaps most significantly over this time (Dr!) Nicola Combe for those days at the British Library, coffee, cake and chats that kept me sane through all this madness, a sanity that I’m fairly confident I’ve since lacked – thank you Nixy, you’re wonderful, I miss you and many of the things about those days!

POST-BRUNEL (MARCH 2010 – JANUARY 2012)

There is really only one person, in relation to my MPhil, whom I need to thank post-February 2010, the one person who has really believed in it, and been prepared to let me know that, and put up with me when I haven’t been feeling the love for it. George, words cannot describe your patience and support for a process that, well, frankly has been unbearable for us both over the past couple of years. Writing these words signals one thing however, and that is the fact that the process is over and hopefully what hasn’t killed us has only made us, and our relationship stronger. I can’t say it wouldn’t have been complete without you but what I can emphatically say is that you saved me completely losing my sanity to this, just about, oh, and without you the spelling and referencing would have been considerably worse! Seriously George thank you so much. Having said that there was only one more person that I needed to thank, there is one other, who thinks he is a person – Mogsy – thank you for all the face rubs as part of the process of completing this research and writing this thesis up, your company and occasional typing assistance has helped make things considerably more enjoyable, thank you!

Contributor: @FergusBisset

Source: Bisset, F (2012) An elucidation of the concept of motivation within museum exhibition design; an exploration of how designers can support motivational engagement within design, MPhil, Brunel University

The many that took part, but chose to keep themselves anonymous.

Contributor: Christopher Dearman

Source: Santa’s Village Gone Wild! You can buy the book at the Santa’s Village website.

It was not about the outcome of obtaining a PhD but instead it was about the process of getting there!

Life has thrown me many curve balls over the years and I would like to give special thanks to my parents for tirelessly supporting me through all the life changing events that eventually led me back to school. Thanks to my mum for being my rock and helping keep me in touch with reality throughout my studies. Thanks to my dad for letting me do it ‘my way’ and for encouraging and inspiring me to reach for my dreams.

Thanks to my husband Darryl (IAMIMOM), for all the inspiring and motivating conversations, that helped me grasp a better understanding of all things game related. Thanks also for being my gaming partner and fellow geek and for all those hours spent unwinding playing co-op Gears of War and Halo 3. Thanks to Kaci, for choosing me as your mum and thanks for keeping me entertained at work when I sneaked you under my table, dressed as a witch pretending to be in a castle full of evil vampires. Thanks to the Charles family for warmly welcoming me and Kaci into their family and for supporting me throughout my studies.

Thanks also to both of my lifelong friends Julie and Monica for being by my side all these years, through all the good times and the bad. “Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave, and impossible to forget.” Thanks to my friend Debbie (aka Wee Elf) for rescuing me from 2^nd yr and showing me that there is a life outside of university and it usually begins with a trip to Next, swiftly followed by a Starbucks! You helped keep my sanity intact although others may find this debatable!

Thanks to all my brothers and sisters, Richard, Brian, Niall, Peter, Danielle, Michaela, and Grace. You have all inspired me and helped me to remain focused and finish my studies. A special thank you to Grace for adopting Kaci as her own and babysitting for hundreds of hours so I could attend university.

Thanks to my excellent supervisory team, Prof. Dave Bustard and Dr. Michaela Black for making the process of doing a PhD both an invaluable and enjoyable experience. Thank you for all your support and guidance throughout the project. Thanks also to Dr. Roger Austin for his advice in the lead up to the write-up. Thanks to the University of Ulster, and also to all the staff from the School of Computing and Information Engineering. A special thanks to Mrs Pauleen Marshall who warmly welcomed me into the School as an undergraduate student and for looking after me so well all these years. I am indebted to you for your kindness. Thanks also to Mr Tony McLaughlin, without your ‘banter’ I may well have thrown in the towel, or shovel!

Finally, I would like to thank Prof. Randy Pausch RIP for giving me perspective and helping me realise it was in fact a ‘head fake’. It was not about the outcome of obtaining a PhD but instead it was about the process of getting there!

“Experience is not what happens to a man, it is what a man does with what happens to him.”

- Aldous Huxley

Contributor: Therese Charles – Therese can be found on LinkedIn or Twitter

Source: Charles, T (2010) Enhanced eLearning Engagement Using Game AbsorptioN Techniques (E.L.E.G.A.N.T), PhD, University of Ulster, School of Computing & Information Engineering

I acknowledge the contribution that Crystal Palace FC and Diet Coke have made to my enjoyment of the last three years

“Certain authors speaking of their works say ‘my book,’ ‘my commentary,’ ‘my history’ etc. They resemble middle class people who have a house of their own, and always have ‘my house’ on their tongue. They would do better to say, ‘our book,’ ‘our commentary,’ ‘our history,’ etc., because there is in them usually more of other people’s than their own.” Pascal

I am grateful to all the ‘other people’ who have given me help and encouragement with everything that was involved in doing this research. The experience of being supervised by Professor Glynis Breakwell has been immensely valuable and I remain grateful for her expertise and encouragement.

Many other people in the Psychology Department at the University of Surrey have formed the backdrop against which this work was done. Particular thanks to Hannah and Moira  for all their help with data collection.  I have also enjoyed the friendship, good humour and good conversation of my fellow PhD students in the Psychology Department – especially Hannah, Patrick, Gerda, Lada, Judit, Viv, Mick and Moira.

As ever, my family have been there for me in different ways. I am very grateful for the support of my parents, Jonny, Tim, Jo, Rach and Uncle Phil and for John’s encouragement to return to studying. The practical and emotional support of friends has also been invaluable. Mandi, Joan, Trudy, Ann, Hilary, Nicky and Linda – thank you! My children have been such a big part of this process. Daniel, Beaky and Sam, I love you: thank you for helping me to keep my work in perspective.

Lastly, I acknowledge the contribution that Crystal Palace FC and Diet Coke have made to my enjoyment of the last three years.

Contributor: @Julieatselhurst

Source: PhD, 1998, University of Surrey

Thank you for your enthusiasm, pride and curiosity to share my map of the world

It is a humbling experience to acknowledge those people who have, mostly out of kindness, helped along the journey of my PhD. I am indebted to so many for encouragement and support.

My sincerest thanks are extended to my project supervisor and mentor, Professor Mary Scholes, for her encouragement and guidance. Eskom and SASOL are acknowledged for their bursary and investment in the research. The National Research Foundation, Andrew Mellon Foundation and the University of the Witwatersrand are thanked for their post-graduate bursary support. The Eskom-SASOL Impacts Working group is acknowledged for their direction and feedback.

My research committee in the School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, Professors Graham Alexander and David Mycock (as chairmen), Dr Barend Erasmus, Dr Chris Herold and Dr Kristy Ross (as committee members), are thanked for their interest and valuable comments on the research. The reviewers of the three manuscripts submitted to journals are thanked for the constructive advice improving the quality of the manuscripts and this thesis.

Several people helped with: the collection of samples, analyses in the laboratory, the preparation of maps, providing advice for statistical analyses and they are all thanked for their contributions. Special mention goes to the support staff of the School of APES, Allison, Chris, Ewa, James, Jason, Kim, Lawrence, Leanne, Lydia, Rori, Ryan, Rob and Stephen C. for help in the field and lab, Stephen W. for assistance with some of the images, Cristy for proof-reading a draft of the thesis. Thanks also to Mr Joseph Mathai for statistical analyses, Prof Edward Witkowski for statistical advice and Ms Jolene Fisher for GIS and statistical advice. Dr Adri Kotze and team at BEM Labs (Pty) Ltd are thanked for their efficient service and prompt response to queries. My heart-felt thanks to Dr Nina Snyman for the private, hands-on tutorials in using ArcGIS. I am grateful to Super Group Limited for assistance with printing copies of the thesis.

To my many friends and family, you should know that your support and encouragement was worth more than I can express on paper.

Thank you Jenny and Meg for breakfasts, tea-breaks and advice – you were always there with a word of encouragement or listening ear.

To Carl – thank you for your enthusiasm, pride and curiosity to share my map of the world.

Mom and Bridget, you knew it would be a long and sometimes bumpy road, but encouraged and supported me along the way. Thank you.

To dad who was often in my thoughts on this journey – you are missed.

Contributor: @terr1firma

Source: Bird, T (2011) Some impacts of sulfur and nitrogen deposition on the soils and surface waters of the Highveld grasslands, South Africa, PhD, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg