This dissertation develops a theory of rebel-state engagement during armed conflict that links these varied interactions to processes of institutional change in the state in which they unfold. Conventional wisdom portrays conflict zones as lacking institutions or pitting armed groups and states as competitors. Yet, this dissertation finds that rebels...
Optical quantum communication (QC) has the potential to address the demands of high-speed and maximally-secure communication. In optical QC, information is encoded onto the state of photons. By using entangled photonic states, QC protocols can support fundamentally secure communication for applications which cannot use classical information. To increase the information...
Web users suffer from security and privacy threats. According to Symantec, 430 million new unique pieces of malware have been discovered in 2015, and over half a billion personal records were stolen or lost in the same year. Defense mechanisms can be classified as reactive approach and proactive approach. Reactive...
In today's marketplace, consumers purchase a basket of goods of different categories from many different types of retail stores. While most marketing literature focuses on studying a single retail chain or a single category, my dissertation considers consumers' collective basket purchases across different retail formats. By doing so, my dissertation...
This dissertation asks how deepening global inequalities reshape the ways families negotiate “economic moralities,” normative expectations of material obligation and entitlement. It focuses on the families of middle class migrants: French-educated Senegalese urbanites whose diplomas no longer protect them from discrimination in Paris but who, among Africans, are still construed...
How do independent artists use social media and e-commerce websites to support their creative businesses? This dissertation examines independent artists’ participation in the peer economy for selling handmade goods, a hybrid economy that combines sharing content on social media and selling goods on e-commerce platforms. While a multidisciplinary array of...
Halide perovskites, AMX3 (A = monocation, B = Ge, Sn, or Pb, and X = halogen), present a versatile class of solution-processable semiconductors made from earth abundant materials with outstanding electrical and optical properties. Their solar cell efficiencies have dramatically increased from ~9% to ~22% in less than five years...
Circling the Cosmograms marks the first full-length study of second-generation feminist and/or queer art and performance in the Haitian Dyaspora (Haitian Kreyòl spelling) following the January 12, 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Through archival research, visual and performance art analysis, and in-depth interviews, I document the ways feminist and/or queer Haitian-American...
Accurate thermodynamic databases are the foundation of predictive microstructure and property models. An initial assessment of the commercially available Thermo-Calc TCAL2 database and the proprietary aluminum database of QuesTek demonstrated a large degree of deviation with respect to equilibrium precipitate phase prediction in the compositional region of interest when compared...
Recent scholarship in critical urban theory, urban political ecology, and related fields has emphasized the "hybridity" of urban-environmental systems. This argument is contrasted with the socially constructed "binary" relationship between "city" and "nature" that dominated historical understandings of urban-environmental connections. Despite wide agreement on these issues, the trajectories that precipitated...