A mentor and friend, from whom I have learnt the vital skill of disciplined critical thinking

Foremost, I would like to express my deepest thanks to my two supervisors, Professor Phil Trinder and Dr Patrick Maier. Their patience, encouragement, and immense knowledge were key motivations throughout my PhD. They carry out their research with an objective and principled approach to computer science. They persuasively conveyed an interest in my work, and I am grateful for my inclusion in their HPC-GAP project.

Phil has been my supervisor and guiding beacon through four years of computer science MEng and PhD research. I am truly thankful for his steadfast integrity, and selfless dedication to both my personal and academic development. I cannot think of a better supervisor to have. Patrick is a mentor and friend, from whom I have learnt the vital skill of disciplined critical thinking. His forensic scrutiny of my technical writing has been invaluable. He has always found the time to propose consistently excellent improvements. I owe a great debt of gratitude to Phil and Patrick.

I would like to thank Professor Greg Michaelson for offering thorough and excellent feedback on an earlier version of this thesis. In addition, a thank you to Dr Gudmund Grov. Gudmund gave feedback on Chapter 4 of this thesis, and suggested generality improvements to my model checking abstraction of HdpH-RS.

A special mention for Dr Edsko de Vries of Well Typed, for our insightful and detailed discussions about network transport design. Furthermore, Edsko engineered the network abstraction layer on which the fault detecting component of HdpH-RS is built.

I thank the computing officers at Heriot-Watt University and the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre for their support and hardware access for the performance evaluation of HdpH-RS.

Contributor: Rob Stewart

Source: Stewart, R (2013) Reliable Massively Parallel Symbolic Computing: Fault Tolerance for a Distributed Haskell, PhD, Heriot Watt University

…my parents for everything. You made me into who I am.

Although writing up the PhD thesis might be the effort of one person, the reason that person even gets as far as starting to write up is thanks to all the people supporting that PhD student. I am grateful for everyone who has been there to support my journey towards the finished thesis. I’m indebted to and grateful for the following persons…

… my main supervisor Stefan Holmlid, for all the support and letting me find my own path whilst at the same time showing me which alternate paths I might be missing. Never forcing, always suggesting suits me perfectly!

… my two co-supervisors Arne Jönsson and Björn Alm. Both of you have provided invaluable outsiders perspectives on my research when most needed. Björn, a special thank you for all the fruitful discussions in general and on the methodological approach in general. And to Arne, thank you for your experience and making sure the research continued to progress towards a finished thesis.

… everyone who has participated in my studies. I am extremely grateful for all your help. In total roughly 50 people have been involved in one way or another in providing the data used in the studies. This thesis would not have been possible to write without your help. An extra warm thank you to everyone in the three agencies I worked in/with for the final study for allowing me to be a part of your work places.

… HCS for providing an enjoyable place to work in. And special thanks to IxS and the fika-crowd. IxS for providing an intellectually inspiring  environment to work in, in which there always are new perspectives to be found when needed – thank you Stefan, Johan, Matti, Johan, Lisa, Eva, Mathias and Tim. And to the fika-crowd for providing many laughs, exciting discussions and a few beers during my PhD studies. So a big thank you to all of you; those of you who were here when I started and now have moved on (Sanna, Maria and Sara), those who have been here throughout most of my PhD (Johan, Amy, Jody and Anna) and all of you have joined the last few years (Lisa, Jonas R, Mattias, Kricke, Falkenskägg, Robin, Tim, Camilla and Karin). Also, thanks to all the administrative staff, especially Lise-Lott and Anne.

… an extra thank you to Johan and Lisa, the ones I tend to turn to first when I have something to discuss. Or just need a break.

… all the photo models. For the cover I want to thank the Zodiaken-staff in general for allowing me to take the photos on the front and back of the thesis cover, and Kristofer Frendesson in particular for getting in front of the camera. Similarly, my thanks go to the “customers” Matti, Lisa, Johan, Amy, Stefan and Tim. Furthermore, many thanks go to Jalal Maleki for taking the photos at Zodiaken. For the examples of visualisation techniques, my thanks go to Anna for modelling and Jonas H for photographing.

… my parents for everything. You made me into who I am.

Research support: The research presented in this thesis has been supported by: Vinnova: SERV project: Service Design, innovation and involvement. Ref no: 2007-03444. European Union: CIP Competitiveness and Innovation Program, research project “Service Design as an approach to foster competitiveness and sustainability of European tourism”.

Contributor: Fabian Segelström

Source: Segelström F (2013) Stakeholder Engagement for Service Design: How service designers identify and communicate insights, PhD, Linköping University

This is perhaps an attempt to put some of my own doubts to rest

This paper is about Vikings and violence. It is an attempt to transform the violence of the Viking raids, and of early medieval Europe in a wider sense, into something that amounts to more than a terse and uninformative annalistic account. Ever since first being taught about cruel, violence Vikings at primary school and how they raped their way across unsuspecting Britain and Ireland, I have been fascinated by the way the Northmen have been depicted. After reading on the subject as an undergraduate, the subject only became more interesting. This is perhaps an attempt to put some of my own doubts to rest.

It would be impossible in the space allowed to give a full and exhaustive analysis of both the actions of Viking invaders and native English and Irish warriors,a brief look at many issues is necessary for my argument. I have not included a narrative or even an overview of the Viking Age, simply because such information is readily available in many forms and is written by scholars far more qualified in the field. There was originally going to be an entire section on the Vikings in Francia, for which there is perhaps the best and most reliable evidence – and a discussion of the impact of post-Viking Age sagas on modern interpretations of Vikings, but there simply was not enough room.

It must also be said that the impact of neighbouring fields of inquiry such as archaeology and numismatics that have offered so much to the historian are unfortunately largely absent from the discussion here simply due to a lack of space. Although this piece concentrates mostly on written sources, and unashamedly draws from a revisionist tradition in secondary material in the Vikings, the same study could perhaps be conducted with just these disciplines in mind.

Gratitude is extended to Professor Ian Moxon, who though not a medievalist was kind enough to provide me with his excellent and very useful translation of the The Life of Anskar, which hopefully one day will see the light of day as a published piece for the benefit of other students without a good grasp of Latin.

Thanks also to those who read all or some of it during the making, especially Professor Ian Wood, Freddie, Peter and Tamsyn who pointed out the worst of the mistakes. I can only accept responsibility myself for the remainder of them.

Contributor: @psmith
Source: Violence, Society and Communication: the Vikings and Pattern of Violence in England and Ireland 793-860,