School of Historical and Philosophical Studies

University students were one of the most vocal opposition groups to the New Order regime in Indonesia. While their political activities were partly responsible for the fall of President Suharto, they achieved this by working together with non-student protesters. These non-student protesters came from the rakyat (people), and figured largely in both student rhetoric and action. This thesis charts the changing relationship between the students and non-student protesters through the perceptions the former held of the latter. Through examining different cases of student-people interaction, such as during the process of bunuh diri kelas (class suicide), the Kedung Ombo case of 1989 and the fall of Suharto in 1998, it argues that the student-people relationship was a dynamic one. This relationship was shaped by changing perceptions which in turn was based upon the changing circumstances faced by the student movement and non-student protesters.

The Monument to Marchese Spinetta Malaspina, a large-scale Renaissance stucco, marble and limestone
memorial from Verona, Italy, has recently been dismantled for conservation before reinstallation in 2009, in the new Medieval and Renaissance Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Since its removal from a Veronese church in 1886, the monument has been relocated three times, with its form being redefined with each reassembly. The properties of the monument’s predominant material, stucco, proved significant to the conservators involved in the monument’s deinstallation and preparation for reinstallation and raised several issues in relation to its authenticity. This contribution documents the chain of processes encountered in efforts to provide full documentation and disclosure of the monument’s complex past.

Kemp, J. "Practical Ethics v2.0", in Bracker, A., Richmond, A., eds., 'Conservation: Principles, Dilemmas, and Uncomfortable Truths', Oxford: Elsevier, September 2009 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Conservation-Principles-Dilemmas-Uncomfortable-Truths/dp/0750682019

Conservation's codes of ethics can only be successfully applied in a closed system and, as with many human agencies, conservation generally operates to a lesser or greater degree in open-ended systems, then all conservation actions are bound to fail when measured against any one version of the ethical codes of conservation. This paper considers the execution of ethical behaviour in both present and future settings with the offer of a beginning to the resolution of this inherent contradiction.

Rebuttal of a recent paper in Springer's  Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment on the threat to the preservation of Taq-e Bostan, published by Springer, March 2015 (access required).

The article under discussion, whilst providing generalized accounts of the effects of waterflows in karstic formations, fails, in the opinion of this respondent, to substantiate the claims that an immediate threat is posed to the continued preservation of the monuments at Tāq-e Bostān, the focus of this response.

A response to the authors’ reply to my discussion of their paper ‘‘An introduction to the karst geomorphology of the Bisetun-Taq-e Bostan historical region (northeast Kermanshah, Iran) with special emphasis on karst development as a serious threat for the UNESCO World Heritage Site. Bull Eng Geol Environ
doi:10.1007/s10064-014-0662-0’’

Abstract: This paper presents an account of the conservation works undertaken on a section of the London Wall at The Grange City Hotel, 8-14 Cooper's Row, London, between April 2013 and September 2015. A theoretical preamble describes the caveats around any notion of authenticity in executing archaeological conservation. A summary is then provided detailing the conservation problems faced and the remedial treatments undertaken on the section in a series 30 and 40 day sessions per year, and includes details of the condition, testing, treatments and materials used during those works. The article concludes with a brief end-section to suggest future conservation works to mitigate the continuing effects of the extant decay mechanisms.

This essay considers a paradigmatic example in Buddhist ethics of the injunction (in the five precepts and five heinous crimes) against killing. It also considers Western ethical concerns in the post-phenomenological thinking of Derrida and Levinas, particularly the latter’s “ethics of responsibility.” It goes on to analyze in-depth an episode drawn from Alan Clements’s experience in 1990 as a Buddhist non-violent, non-combatant in war-torn Burma. It explores Clements’s ethical predicament as he faced an imminent need to act, perhaps even kill and thereby repudiate his Buddhist inculcation. It finds a wealth of common (yet divergent) ground in Levinasian and Mahāyāna ethics, a site pregnant for Buddhist ethical self-interrogation.