Digital Commons Network^™

Eritrean Refugees Between Securitization And Survival Along The Sahara Route To Egypt, Zeina Shoukry

Theses and Dissertations

Eritrea remains one of the largest refugee-producing countries in the world, with mandatory military conscription serving as a primary driver of displacement. This thesis examines the precarious journey of Eritrean refugees across the Sahara Desert en route to Egypt, situating this movement within the broader context of border securitization. It argues that the journey itself constitutes a critical and often overlooked phase of the migration process, as significant as both departure and destination.

Drawing on migration infrastructure theory and migrant network theory, this study foregrounds Eritrean refugees’ agency and resilience. It analyzes how refugees mobilize knowledge, digital technologies, social networks, …

Beyond The Legal Black Hole: Hyper-Legality, Deferral, And Detention In Northeast Syria, Grace T. Harmon

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the detention of suspected ISIS affiliates and their family members held in facilities administered by the Kurdish-led authorities in North-East Syria. Thousands of foreign nationals remain detained without trial, without repatriation, and in conditions widely criticized as inhumane. Existing scholarship and political discourse often describe these facilities as legal voids, limbo, or black holes where law has broken down or ceased to apply. This thesis challenges that characterization. Rather than existing outside the law, the facilities are governed through overlapping frameworks of international humanitarian law, international human rights law, counterterrorism security resolutions, and domestic laws. I argue …

Organizational Planning Practices Under Uncertainty: The Case Of Ngos In Hadhramaut, Yemen, Khulood Taleb Alamodi

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines how local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Hadhramaut, Yemen plan and operate under conditions of fragility and uncertainty. Although strategic planning is often presented as a formal and structured process, NGOs in fragile settings face ongoing disruption, unstable funding, and weak institutions. This study asks how planning takes place in practice under these conditions. The study uses qualitative data from 22 semi-structured interviews with NGO leaders, staff, and external actors. A conceptual framework combining contextual fragility, resource dependence, organizational capacity and resilience, and legitimacy and networks was used to examine how these factors shape organizational planning. The findings …

From Planned To Lived: Street-Level Transformation And The Production Of Urban Space In New Cairo, Seba Abouyoussef

Theses and Dissertations

Egypt's new cities program has produced four generations of satellite developments, yet none have been systematically evaluated for how they perform once inhabited. Each is planned as a prototype — functionally zoned, automobile-oriented, image-driven — with little regard for the social, cultural, and behavioral dynamics that will shape it. This thesis examines the gap between the planned city and the lived city by tracing how three streets in New Cairo transformed over a fifteen-year period (2010–2025) through everyday use, stakeholder interaction, and pivotal trigger events.

The research follows a qualitative, multi-phase methodology — combining historical and physical mapping, behavioral observation, …

Evolution Of Pre-Service Teacher Beliefs Along The Traditional-Reform Continuum: An Examination Of Normative Beliefs And Discursive Claims A Decade Later, Mary Elizabeth Riley Lloyd, Adam Jordan

The Mathematics Enthusiast

This study replicated an earlier study that explored the beliefs of a sample of K-8 pre-service teachers (PSTs). Results of this study position PSTs’ beliefs along a traditional-reform continuum. The positioning from the current study is compared to that of the former study, to determine the level of progress made toward the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ commitment to high-quality instruction. To position beliefs, PSTs completed a Likert survey, including open-ended questions, three times throughout their teacher preparation program (TPP): before taking any of their mathematics education courses, after taking both required mathematics education courses, and after student teaching. …

Multimodal Interpretation Of Notation, Dave Hewitt, Jenni Ingram

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Challenges related to the teaching and learning of formal notation in school mathematics are widely documented, and specifically in relation to the underlying mathematical structures that the notation is intended to convey. In this article, we draw on embodied cognition to examine the interactions among three students working with the software Grid Algebra. Embodied cognition emphasises the role of gesture and movement in learning and understanding mathematics. Grid Algebra uses movement to direct students’ attention to mathematical operations on numbers and numerical expressions within the grid and the structure of these operations, while the software takes care of the …

Pre-Service Teachers’ Noticing Of The Function Of Mathematical Naming In The Teaching Of Fractions, Juan Manuel González-Forte, Núria Planas

The Mathematics Enthusiast

In this paper, we present the rationale and results of a study conducted with 79 pre-service primary-school teachers on their sensitivities to notice the pedagogic function of naming practices in the language of teaching fractions. Our results are a contribution to noticing research on mathematics teacher education and language. Although participants were not familiar with discussions of the language of teaching mathematics in general and the language of teaching fractions in particular, they engaged in an intervention with a professional task that provided opportunities to notice potential relationships between mathematical naming and the conceptual understanding of fractions. The written answers …

Affordances For Graphical Shape Thinking Through Vivid Informal Classroom Talk, Elizabeth Kimber, Cathy Smith

The Mathematics Enthusiast

The shape of a graph arising from the covariation of variables is a crucial idea in reasoning about functions and graphs. Students’ perspectives on graph shape may foreground visual features and consider the shape to be a fixed property of the function (static graphical shape thinking). In contrast, students can perceive the graph as a trace of covarying quantities, through which its shape arises (emergent graphical shape thinking). It is of interest to understand how these perspectives are supported and promoted by teachers in classroom discourse. We present findings from a study of classroom discourse in which we used systemic …

From Uncertainty To Dialogue: Visualising Collaborative Noticing And Mathematical Intuitions In Students' Narratives Within Probability Learning, Daniela Diaz-Rojas

The Mathematics Enthusiast

This study explores the critical role of language and communication in fostering collaborative noticing practices that display mathematical intuitions within probability learning. Through an analysis of student interactions, I show how the joint articulation of ideas and the exploration of shared doubt enable intuition, often perceived as an object that is held and a solitary experience, to become a socially shared and co-constructed process. The observed collaborative dialogue concerns shared content and form, constructing a joint narrative architecture that enables common understanding and allows the group to notice, examine, and reshape their intuitions. Collaborative noticing when working with probability problems …

Affectivity As A Form Of Communication During Interactions Between Parent, Child, And Touchcounts, Qiang Lin

The Mathematics Enthusiast

This qualitative study examines communication in family mathematics settings, focusing on how embodied communication is constituted during parent–child interaction with a multitouch technology application, TouchCounts. Moving beyond information–transmission perspectives, the study adopts an embodied and relational approach centered on affectivity—conceptualized as the circulation of attunement, resonance, and intensity of movement and feeling across human and non-human components of the parent–child–TouchCounts assemblage. Drawing on close qualitative analysis of two selected video-recorded excerpts, the study traces how mathematical events unfold moment by moment through bodily action and material engagement, and how affective flow shapes how participants respond to one …

Book Review: Irrationality, Transcendence And The Circle-Squaring Problem: An Annotated Translation Of J. H. Lambert’S Vorläufige Kenntnisse And Mémoire (2nd Ed.), Bharath Sriraman

The Mathematics Enthusiast

This review examines Irrationality, Transcendence and the Circle-Squaring Problem (2nd ed., 2024) by Eduardo Dorrego López and Elías Fuentes Guillén, offering the first complete annotated English translations of Johann Heinrich Lambert’s two foundational texts on the irrationality of π: the semi-popular Vorläufige Kenntnisse (1766/1770) and the rigorous Mémoire (1761/1768). The review situates these translations within Lambert’s remarkable and largely underappreciated life—a self-taught polymath who rose from a tailor’s workshop in Mulhouse to the Berlin Academy of Sciences—and gives careful attention to the proof of irrationality of π via continued fractions, placing it in dialogue with the Niven–Hermite integral approach, the …

Enhancing User Engagement In Heritage Sites Through Interactive Digital Design: Development And Evaluation Of A Web-Based Application At The Qalawun Complex, Hend Bazeed

Theses and Dissertations

This study develops and evaluates a web-based interactive application for the Qalawun Complex in Cairo, a fourteenth-century Mamluk monument of significant tangible and intangible cultural heritage value, with the aim of enhancing visitor engagement beyond the passive observation that characterizes most heritage visits. The research is structured within an Asset-Design-Evaluate (ADE) framework and grounded in Radical Constructivism, Situated Learning theory, and the Design-Dynamics-Experience (DDE) framework, positioning the physical architecture of the site as the primary source of visitor knowledge through observation-based interaction tasks.

The application, titled "Qalawun's Treasure," comprises eight spatially anchored hotspots across the mausoleum, madrasa, and bimaristan of …

Egypt’S Accession To Brics: Hedging And Strategic Positioning In A Multipolar Order, Daria Konstantinova

Theses and Dissertations

Amid Egypt’s longstanding, multifaceted cooperation with the U.S. and Western institutions, spanning political support, economic partnerships, and IMF/World Bank programs, 2024 BRICS expansion included Egypt as one of the new group’s members. This move might be explained by leadership strategic vision, domestic constraints, and geopolitical global and regional dynamics. This research explains the drivers behind Egypt’s accession to BRICS and the way this decision reflects Egypt’s strategic positioning in a changing global order, using agency-centered approach and the theoretical framework of strategic hedging.

While existing literature on BRICS expansion partially explains the reasons behind the new members’ accession and its …

Undefined By Design: The Fragmented Public Understanding Of Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion (Dei) By Americans, Caroline Umphlet

Theses and Dissertations

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies have become a contentious issue in contemporary United States public discourse, yet a critical question remains as to whether the public shares a common foundational understanding of these terms. While DEI as a concept has developed and evolved significantly since the 1960s, public understanding remains ardently fragmented.

This thesis aims to answer the research questions: how does the 60+ age group in the US define and understand diversity, equity, and inclusion and DEI policies? The 60+ age group was specifically chosen because their definitions give insight into the publics’ understanding of policy topics when …

Sufism At The Service Of Ḥadīth Commentary: Re-Framing Al-Kalābādhī'S Baḥr Al-FawāʾId In Fourth-Tenth Century Transoxiana, Fadhil Yunus Alsagoff

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Abū Bakr al-Kalābādhī’s (d. 380/990) understudied ḥadīth commentary, the Baḥr al-fawāʾid al-mashhūr bi-maʿānī al-akhbār. The first Anglophone study of the text as a whole, this thesis situates itself within the emergent literature on ḥadīth commentaries and challenges the prevailing scholarly tendency to reduce Sufi-authored commentarial texts to the ishārī method of interpretation and to treat them solely as repositories of Sufi themes. This thesis argues that, contrary to current perceptions of the text as primarily a work of Sufism, the Baḥr al-fawaʾid is first and foremost a work of ḥadīth commentary, its main intent being to …

Circulating Futures: Infrastructure, Value, And The Making Of Contemporary Egypt, Yasmine Abdeldayem

Theses and Dissertations

Since 2014, Egypt has undertaken an unprecedented expansion of its road network as part of a broader project of territorial development and national renewal. Roads are presented in this project as the connective infrastructure through which new cities, investment zones, and desert territories are brought into circulation. Yet their developmental effects are often difficult to discern: infrastructure is rapidly built but unevenly maintained, while projects justified in terms of mobility, growth, and public benefit can produce dispossession, exclusion, and new forms of risk. This thesis argues that roads cannot be understood solely through the developmental outcomes they are intended to …

Technology, Power, And Colonial Modernity: The Making Of The Egyptian Railways, Ahmed Mohamed Rahmy

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Egyptian railways as a technology of power through which modern temporal order was gradually formed, reorganized, and contested. Focusing on the period from 1850 to 1920, it argues that railway infrastructure did more than facilitate mobility, economic exchange, and imperial administration: it reorganized the temporal relations through which social life was governed and experienced. Timetables, standardized schedules, fares, penalties, stations, and administrative procedures made punctuality, regularity, and measurable time appear as neutral requirements of life, while positioning existing ecological, agricultural, religious, and communal rhythms as signs of backwardness.

The thesis draws on British official correspondence, parliamentary debates, …

The Smuggled Body: Embodied Experiences Of Sudanese Displacement Along The Sudan–Egypt Corridor, Marielys Padua Soto

Theses and Dissertations

The outbreak of conflict in Sudan in April 2023 triggered one of the world's largest displacement crises, forcing millions of Sudanese civilians to flee toward neighboring countries, particularly Egypt. As legal pathways became increasingly restricted following Egypt's tightening of visa policies, many asylum seekers relied on migrant smuggling networks to reach safety. This thesis examines how restrictive mobility regimes are materially experienced through the body by introducing the concept of the smuggled body, defined as the body through which the physical, emotional, and social consequences of border control, irregular mobility, and forced displacement are lived. Drawing on embodiment theory, border …

How Can Egypt’S Technical And Vocational Education System Be Adapted To Improve The Employability Of Autistic Youth And Adults?, Miriam A. Menkarious

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides original qualitative evidence on autism, employability, and TVET in an LMIC context, focusing on Egypt’s ongoing TVET reforms. The research investigated barriers and facilitators to employment for autistic youth and adults in Egypt, with a particular focus on technical and vocational education and training (TVET) as a potential pathway into work, and explored stakeholder perspectives on the potential, barriers, and conditions for adapting the Egyptian TVET system to improve their employability. Using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) framework, this qualitative study relied on 20 semi-structured in-depth interviews with autistic youth and adults, parents …

Policy Coherence And Private Sector Development In Egypt: Aligning Governance Reforms With Development Finance, Shereef El Tanahi

Theses and Dissertations

Despite record volumes of development finance flowing into Egypt, the private sector, particularly its micro, small, and medium enterprises, has yet to experience the broad-based growth these investments were designed to catalyze. Between 2020 and 2025, international development partners committed more than 15.6 billion dollars to Egypt's private sector, yet private investment remains a modest share of the national economy, and most domestic firms continue to face severe barriers to credit.

This thesis argues that the answer lies not in the volume of capital mobilized, but in the coherence of the policies that govern how that capital reaches firms. The …

The Functioning Of The Refugee Regime In The Global South, Rihem Sejil

Theses and Dissertations

Why do states continue to sign compacts and reaffirm responsibility-sharing, even as protection burdens fall increasingly on the Global South? This thesis argues that this concentration is a direct result of, rather than an exception to, international cooperation. It introduces the concept of "selective cooperation" to explain how states maintain formal commitments to protection while repurposing cooperation: shifting it from a remedial tool designed to assist burdened hosts to one focused on containment and preventing arrivals. Three mechanisms facilitate this shift: donor retrenchment, resettlement contraction, and externalization, with each mechanism closing gaps left by the others. Analyzing cases spanning resettlement, …

“The Light Of Certain Belief” – Orthodoxy Versus Innovation According To Abū Ḥāmid Al-Ghazālī’S Al-Risāla Al-Qudsiyyah, Thomas Robinson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the question of Islamic orthodoxy in the thought of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, with particular attention to his Risāla al-Qudsiyya and its place within his wider intellectual and reformative project. It begins by exploring concepts of orthodoxy and heterodoxy across the Christian and Islamic traditions, arguing that orthodoxy emerges through processes of interpretation, doctrinal conflict, boundary formation, and communal consensus. Islamic orthodoxy is understood as the historically consolidated mainstream of belief rooted in the Qurʾān, the Sunnah, the authority of the early community, and the scholarly tradition.

The central argument of the thesis is that al-Ghazālī conceives of …

Here Comes The Sun: A Diachronic Study Of The Role Of Music In The Amarna Period, Waleed Hawatky

Theses and Dissertations

Music has and continues to play a prominent role in the lives of individuals and in society, hardwired into the human experience and integral to our understanding of the world in both its tangible and intangible manifestations. This was no different in dynastic Egypt, where abundant iconographic and physical evidence from the Old Kingdom onward shows music performed in many diverse contexts at every social level.

Music appears not only to gain prominence during the reign of Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten (c. 1353–1335), also known as the Amarna Period, but also to develop innovations, including new kinds of instruments and musical ensembles, …

Dynamic Baseline Schedule Updates Using Digital Twinning: A Case Study On Aluminum Formwork Construction, Ahmed Hamdi Sweilam

Theses and Dissertations

Repetitive high-rise construction using aluminum formwork couples consecutive floor cycles through a reused panel set and a floor-level inspection and pour barrier, so productivity loss compounds upward rather than being absorbed locally. The baseline schedule is nevertheless fixed before execution and is not revised as evidence of realized productivity accumulates. This thesis develops a simulation-based digital twin that updates the baseline from observed as-built durations and acts on its own forecast. A discrete-event simulation of a ten-story residential tower is built in AnyLogic® and verified analytically at 180.00 hours per floor. After each completed floor the twin infers activity productivity …

Unearthing Potential: Impact Investors’ Perspectives On Egypt’S Social Enterprise Market, Yousef Hesham Shoukry

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines impact investing in Egypt from the vantage point of the impact investors, revealing that Egypt's constraint is not the availability of capital but its direction, as the absence of legal recognition, coordinated intermediaries, and a shared impact-measurement standard keeps capital out of a market otherwise rich in social enterprise potential. The study employed a constructivist grounded theory approach, drawing on eleven semi-structured interviews with impact fund managers, ecosystem enablers, and public-sector policy advisors operating in or considering Egypt's social enterprise market. Data revealed that practitioners converge on the founding principles of impact investment (combined financial and social …

Adjudicating Technology Facilitated Violence Against Women In Egypt: Between The Text And The Application, Eman E. Zidan

Theses and Dissertations

Technology-facilitated violence against women (TFVAW) has surged on digital platforms, leading to a sharp rise in victimization rates among girls and women globally. Egypt’s pioneering cybercrime legislation, though comprehensive, remains gender-neutral and inadequate in judicial application. Community perceptions reveal systemic gaps that erode public trust and fuel demands for specialized protections. This study analyzes Egyptian judicial responses to TFVAW cases through comparative jurisprudence with jurisdictions that feature gender-specific norms. Findings demonstrate that textual provisions alone fail to arrest this escalating phenomenon, underscoring the need for integrated reforms: tailored legislation, heightened awareness campaigns, and collaborative education on rights, duties, and societal …

Bridging The Gap Between Career Expectations Versus Labor Market Realities, Reinette P. Madrid, Grethel T. Ledesma, Ignatius Aryono Putranto, Jyro B. Triviño

Leadership and Strategy Faculty Publications

Most students lack awareness regarding the labor market outcomes for their chosen college majors. This study aims to answer what factors affect the career expectations of graduating students at Quezon City University and how these expectations align with the prevailing labor market situation. It employed descriptive, causal, and explanatory research using a sample of 108 respondents from fourth-year information technology students for the school year 2021 to 2022. Eight of the nine null hypotheses were rejected by employing multinomial logistic and linear regression. Student fixed effects and other labor market outcomes significantly predicted salary, estimated stability, and estimated skills in …

A Policy Analysis Of Accountability And Governance In Journalism By Artificial Intelligence (Ai) In Egypt, Amira Ahmed Salama

Theses and Dissertations

The growing use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) and AI-assisted tools in journalism raises governance questions concerning accountability, human oversight, transparency, verification, editorial responsibility, and implementation. In Egypt, these issues arise within an emerging but fragmented governance environment that includes national AI guidance, media regulation, professional self-regulation, and developing newsroom practices. This study examines how these arrangements can be integrated into a coherent national sector-specific policy framework for GenAI and AI-assisted journalism.

The study adopts a qualitative methodology combining a descriptive qualitative document analysis with stakeholder semi-structured interviews. Four governance instruments were analyzed: the Council of Europe’s Guidelines on the …

Telling Her Story, Reclaiming Her Power: A Narrative-Based Group Intervention For Women Impacted By Intimate Partner Violence, Marisa E. Busquets

Psychology Doctoral Specialization Projects

Intimate partner violence (IPV) constitutes a significant public health concern, adversely impacting women’s physical health, psychological functioning, and narrative identity. While existing group interventions, such as The Power to Change manual, provide structured psychoeducational and empowerment-based programming, few adequately address the disruptions to identity and meaning-making processes that often accompany experiences of abuse. The present doctoral specialty project proposes the development of a manualized group intervention for adult women impacted by IPV, grounded in the theoretical and clinical principles of narrative therapy. Narrative therapy conceptualizes identity as an evolving life story shaped by sociocultural and political contexts, and its techniques, …

The Contractual Womb: U.S. Surrogacy Reform Through A Federal Bioethical Framework, Yasmine A. Quinones

Student Works

No abstract provided.