Global environmental concerns impose an increasing demand for stringent control of emissions. This is of pressing importance to the power generation sector. Accordingly, the emphasis has shifted to ultra-low emission technology. Correspondingly, combustion engineers and scientists are moving away from nonpremixed combustion to premixed combustion devices.The proposed project is aimed at improving the physical understanding of the fundamental aspects of premixed turbulent combustion, namely, (i) large-eddy simulation investigation of premixed turbulent flame development of multi-component fuel/air mixtures, (ii) influence of high-pressure on turbulent burning velocities, and (iii) the molecular transport effects (the Lewis number and preferential diffusion) on premixed flame characteristics. Specifically, it will examine the above named effect of the three factors on the flame characteristics. The study will focus on addition of diluents (H2, CO, CO2 and H2O) to hydrocarbon mixtures, biofuels and synthetic gas. In the second phase of the work, a universal turbulent reacting flow model for diluent/hydrocarbon/air mixtures will be developed and validated against independent experimental databases.Numerical investigations will be undertaken using advanced large-eddy simulation technique and will incorporate a variety of combustion models. Any improved devices arising from this work will enhance the scope for diversifying energy resources. Advances resulting from this study should enable the UK industrial sector to take a lead in developing design guidelines for combustion applications. Additionally, it has the merit of meeting the strategic objectives of the European Community in achieving independence from the use of fossil fuels.

Awaiting Public Project Summary

Since the banking crash of 2008 the commercial art world has become increasingly polarised: the most economically powerful art galleries have opened multiple outposts across the globe, while several mid and small scale galleries have closed. Challenged by space costs in central locations, the rise of international art fairs, and the growing significance of presentation in virtual space, the mid and small scale gallery space is seeming under threat. This research will critically evaluate the current situation and speculate on alternative proposals for the future of the commercial gallery as a principle means to show, promote and sell the work of contemporary artists. Using a case study approach, I will focus on London as one of the key international centres of contemporary art, and home to a representative range of small, mid and large scale art businesses, several of the latter being international organisations. London is also the gallery landscape I am most familiar with as a gallerist, curator and writer. The key issues my research seeks to address are whether the gallerist could be an operator without the constrictions a high end retail model demands with its strict ideological codes of white space masking dazzling deals in a manner the early 20th century deemed appropriate. The gallerist as a connecting, distributing, managing and selling force is a role often seen in other creative industries - the music and literary world for example - and permutations on this role may offer viable alternative business models. The role of the commercial contemporary art gallery and the gallerist is a historically rich subject of enquiry, albeit a challenging area to research. Through an in-depth study of the London commercial art scene, including archives/interviews and business modelling, the aim is to propose new and alternative models for the relationship between artists and gallerists.

My practice-based research explores how a diverse network of performative practices can converge as acts of decolonisation. To this end, my PhD interrogates notions of learning through the reconstruction of an auto-ethnographic narrative of encounters with a specific set of plants central to the ecology of my native Colombia. Through the consultation, interrogation and interaction with these and a number of related plants, my project aims to challenge and displace narratives at the heart of Colombia's colonial history. Espeletia and Plantago are prime examples of the unique ecosystem that comprises the páramo, a high mountain biome found in the north Andes of South America. During my PhD I have undertaken two research trips to encounter these plants in their native environment, making drawings, collating sound, video footage and further records relevant to the development of my project. Central to this PhD, situated within the field of contemporary art practice, is the development of an innovative, experimental and multi-modal form of presentation which enables a polyphony of voices, gestures and utterances to manifest themselves in ways that mesh human and botanical agency. To achieve this, I have staged a series of events titled 'More than an Object, its Shadow' held at venues including the ICA and The Stanley Picker Gallery. At each event I have presented my findings re-enacting my botanical encounters, drawing on diverse sources including Mignolo's (2018) decolonial thinking and Gagliano's (2014) plant sentience. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and postponement of further research trips, virtual encounters including Zoom interviews with key artists and researchers became central to the development of apt forms of presenting my work to wide and diverse audiences. The remainder of my PhD will build on these developments to devise a submission format that challenges and expands existing notions of knowledge production and representation.

The question of touch is an inherently paradoxical one, living an interdisciplinary life: the moment we conceptualize it, its integrity is dissolved, and its immediacy undone. For this reason, this research attempts to capture its critical force by analysing the distribution of the moments, texts and figures in the Western history of touch as it appears to us: making and breaking contact, abandoning periodization and fracturing the unity of a single, unchangeable origin, in order to situate and expand Adorno's philosophy - a strange development in a thinking of touch running from Aristotle to Merleau-Ponty. The central line of inquiry, that of Adorno's theory of Negative Dialectics will be tested against the second area of investigation, namely, the discontinuous history of the sense of touch, animated by the philosophies of Derrida, Kant, Hegel and Husserl, among others. Together, these prisms will be instrumentalized in answering the central question of the research: does Adorno implicitly develop a theory of aesthetic cognition? as the above-mentioned doctrines used in conjunction, can unpack this concept as an act in which the other and self - the traditional philosophical poles of subjectivity and objectivity, are presented to each other from a new perspective. What are the forms of subjectivity and community the concept of touch delivers? What are the principles it is called upon to express? What are the structures of experience it belongs to and those that fall outside of it? This research aims to study the consequences of this paradox as they unfold across the history of this movement and ultimately to demonstrate that Adorno's position, in contrast with the established interpretation, not only figures, but also contributes to the conceptual framework in which the question of touch is addressed.