Pantomath Ustinov College’s Scholarly Journal
Smellscaping into the Past page 6
Hong Kong Has Restored Order. But Can Its Legislature Deliver More? page 10 Symbolism and Social Identity in Bronze Age Asian Pottery page 14 Unravelling the Mystery of Dark Matter page 19
2025-26
The Pantomath
Ustinov College’s Scholarly Journal
Contents Introduction Principal’s Introduction
p4
Research Smellscaping into the Past
p 6-9
Hong Kong Has Restored Order. But Can Its Legislature Deliver More?
p 10-13
Symbolism and Social Identity in Bronze Age Asian Pottery
p 14-15
‘Only Burger, Chips and Pop’: McDonald’s as a Contextual Safeguarding Context for Young Managers Aged 18–25
p 16-18
Unravelling the Mystery of Dark Matter
p 19-21
Cognitive dependency and AI regulation
p 22-23
“Singleness of Money” or Sound Bite? Re-examining the Bank of England’s Case Against Stablecoins
p 24-27
Editor’s Note Dear Readers, Welcome to the Pantomath 2025-2026 issue. First and foremost, I would like to thank every single student who submitted their work to be included in The Pantomath. It has been such a pleasure to read through everyone’s submissions, and to get a glimpse at the brilliant, wide range of work that Ustinov’s student body has to offer. I’d also like to thank our Principal, Sophie Holland, and our former College Administration Coordinator, Jasmine Donovan, for their constant support and guidance this term. As always, it has been a privilege to edit the work of some of the brightest minds in Durham, and I hope that everyone who reads these pieces feels the same way. Happy reading!
Thank you, Zoya Medina
MSc Management (Entrepreneurship) Editor of The Ustinovian & Pantomath 2025/26 Having the opportunity to edit the work of students in the same college as me who are studying completely different courses has kept me grounded and allowed me to leave my comfort zone.
Kane Crookes
MA Creative Writing Assistant Editor of The Pantomath 25/26 ‘The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of Ustinov College or Durham University’
page 2
page 3
The Pantomath
Ustinov College’s Scholarly Journal
A Welcome from the Principal, Sophie Holland Welcome to the latest edition of the Pantomath Academic Journal. The Pantomath is more than a journal: it is an opportunity for our postgraduate researchers to share their ideas, celebrate their achievements, and gain valuable early publication experience. Whether you are presenting your first piece of research or building your academic profile, this is your journal and a space for your voice to be heard. At Ustinov College, we are proud of the diverse and inspiring research undertaken by our students. I encourage you to take this
page 4
opportunity to contribute, collaborate, and inspire others through your work. Every submission enriches our academic community and reflects the innovation, curiosity, and excellence that define postgraduate research. I look forward to reading your contributions and seeing The Pantomath continue to grow as a showcase for the outstanding scholarship within our College. All good wishes, Sophie Holland Principal, Ustinov College
page 5
The Pantomath
Ustinov College’s Scholarly Journal
Smellscaping into the Past
A small specimen is placed within a sealed glass vial. As the sample is heated, volatile compounds are released into the space immediately above it, which is known as the ‘headspace’. Once the volatile compounds have accumulated within this confined space, they are introduced into the GC-MS, where the compounds are separated, and their chemical identities investigated. The resulting data provides a chemical profile of the VOC assemblage associated with the archaeological material. Detected VOCs can subsequently be examined for associated odour descriptors, allowing patterns within the assemblage to be explored and developed into odour profiles.
Rose Malik
Ever wanted to travel back in time? To walk through an ancient Egyptian tomb, stand beside a Roman burial site, or experience a day in the life of a medieval cess worker?
To examine these questions, HS techniques were applied across a diverse selection of archaeological materials and environments, including an aromatic residue from an ancient Egyptian vessel, archival Egyptian human remains, Roman burial soils, and soils from multi-phase excavation sites, such as deposits from medieval cesspits. This diversity allowed comparisons between different materials and depositional environments to assess whether odour-bearing compounds could be detected and, more importantly, how
Archaeology is remarkably good at showing us what the past looked like. Buildings, objects, burials and landscapes all survive, allowing us to reconstruct aspects of the environments in which people have lived and died. More difficult is expressing how those environments may have felt to the people behind the artefacts and structures. Human experience is never purely visual nor is it always tangible. Past lives were experienced through sound, touch, taste and smell as well as sight. Smell, arguably one of the most intangible of all the senses, is particularly powerful. Odours can evoke long-term memories and are a part of the way we experience people, places and presence. In the past, they were similarly embedded within everyday activities, environments and material practices, from food preparation and agriculture to perfume production, burial and religious ritual. Yet smell remains one of the most difficult aspects of past experience to investigate and interpret archaeologically. This research examines whether chemistry can help us access an elusive part of the archaeological record. Smells do not survive intact for centuries or millennia. An aromatic substance placed in an ancient Egyptian vessel thousands of years ago will have undergone chemical changes as it aged. Organic materials decompose. Molecules react with their environments. Burial conditions, microorganisms, temperature, handling, conservation treatments and modern contamination can all affect what survives. This means that finding a volatile organic compound, or VOC, in an archaeological sample page 6
volatile chemical evidence behaves across the archaeological record. One of the most significant findings is that archaeological VOC evidence is messy. The chemical profiles do not provide pristine molecular snapshots of the past. Instead, they contain partial and transformed evidence shaped by degradation, preservation, depositional environment, contamination and interactions between materials over time. Across the different materials, detected compounds included chemical classes such as aldehydes, esters, ketones, fatty acids and terpenoids, many of which are associated with odour. Yet no single compound can tell us what a material once was, let alone how it smelled, without the surrounding context. This has led towards a degradationinformed, assemblage-based approach, in which dominant chemical classes are considered alongside possible degradation relationships, archaeological context, preservation conditions and associations with other evidence. Together, these can contribute towards the development of odour profiles to build a bigger olfactory picture.
Odour descriptors associated with compounds detected in a VOC assemblage can be grouped into broader sensory categories and visually represented as odour wheels. These visualisations provide a heuristic tool for exploring the potential olfactory character represented within the surviving chemical evidence. One approach is to borrow from archaeology’s traditionally visuocentric means of representing the past. Odour profiles, visualised as odour wheels, become ‘odour prints.’ Returned to their archaeological context, these prints help build an interpretive smellscape. A smellscape, therefore, is not simply a list of individual smells but an entangled mélange that intrudes, converges and dissipates within an environment. When odour profiles are returned to their archaeological contexts, a broader sensory environment begins to emerge. Like a landscape, the smellscape can be understood through the interactions of people, materials, activities, spaces and environmental conditions. Different odours overlap, disappear, intensify and modify as people move through time and space.
Smells do not survive intact for centuries or millennia. An aromatic substance placed in an ancient Egyptian vessel thousands of years ago will have undergone chemical changes as it aged. does not necessarily mean that we have discovered a molecule exactly as it existed, or smelled, in antiquity. That distinction is fundamental to the interpretation of ancient smells. The original question behind the project was relatively simple: can we detect VOC evidence associated with archaeological smells? As the research developed, however, the question changed. If volatile compounds can survive, what exactly are we detecting after hundreds or thousands of years of chemical transformation? And how can that evidence be interpreted archaeologically? Rather than attempting to recreate an authentic ancient smell, the investigation therefore examines what survives and what those surviving chemical traces might tell us about past materials, activities and sensory environments.
Investigating ancient smells in material remains involves using headspace (HS) sampling and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Headspace sampling is particularly suited to the investigation of odour because it targets the volatile compounds released from a material into the surrounding air. Combined with GC-MS, the technique separates and identifies VOCs released even from minute samples of organic and inorganic material. This matters in archaeology, where researchers are keen to avoid damaging material that is often excavated, archived and irreplaceable. The small sample quantities required for HS analysis allow VOCs to be investigated with minimal disturbance to the archaeological material.
The Ustinov Scholarly Journal
page 7
The Pantomath
Ustinov College’s Scholarly Journal
Conceptual illustration of a wabet, showing the progression from surviving molecular evidence and odour profile towards an interpretive smellscape
Smellscaping into Egypt Imagine, if you will, an ancient
Egyptian mortuary workshop (a wabet), in which the preparation of the dead brought together human bodies, aromatic preparations, resins and oils, linen, desiccating materials and the activities of the practitioners themselves. Rather than possessing a single identifiable ‘ancient Egyptian smell’, this working environment would have contained a shifting mixture of odours produced as materials were handled, combined and transformed. Some may have been aromatic, resinous, woody or oily; others arose from the body, organic degradation, smoke, the surrounding environment and the people working within it.
page 8
Smell, arguably one of the most intangible of all the senses, is particularly powerful. Odours can evoke long-term memories and are a part of the way we experience people, places and presence.
These odours would have overlapped and changed throughout the preparation process, forming a multi-odorous smellscape in which the practical and ritual dimensions of mortuary treatment converged. Interpreted alongside archaeological and textual evidence, the surviving chemical traces therefore offer more than a catalogue of smells: they provide another route through which to explore the activities, materials and sensory conditions surrounding preparation of the dead for the afterlife. This same approach can be applied across very different archaeological environments, from highly ritualised and mortuary spaces to the activities and odours of everyday life. Such smellscapes remind us that odour formed part of how past environments
were encountered and understood, while opening broader questions concerning trade, status, health, wealth and wellbeing. This is ultimately why archaeological smell matters. Archaeology cannot return us unchanged to a sensory moment thousands of years ago, and chemistry cannot bottle the exact, authentic smell of the ancient past. What it can provide is another form of archaeological evidence. The molecules that survive, although fragmentary and transformed, add another dimension to the discipline. They allow us to move from the chemical traces preserved in archaeological materials towards a richer understanding of the sensory worlds in which daily life once flowed. So, does archaeology stink? The evidence suggests that it does! page 9
The Pantomath
Hong Kong Has Restored Order. But Can Its Legislature Deliver More? Edward J. Zeng PhD in Political Science and Government
Ustinov College’s Scholarly Journal
The case for policy competition within an executive-led system
From constitutional conflict to institutional coordination
Hong Kong’s political institutions are markedly quieter than they were several years ago. Legislative obstruction has largely disappeared, bills are passed more efficiently, and overt confrontation between the executive and the legislature has sharply declined. For supporters of the current political order, these developments show that Hong Kong has moved beyond prolonged instability and restored an executiveled system capable of governing more effectively.
For much of the period before 2020, Hong Kong politics centred on constitutional questions: universal suffrage, the (s)election of the Chief Executive, the composition of the Legislative Council and the relationship between the city and the central government of China. These disputes reflected genuine democratic aspirations as well as competing interpretations of Hong Kong’s autonomy.
The restoration of order, however, has created a different institutional challenge. Once disruptive confrontation has receded, how can the political system retain sufficient scrutiny, representation and policy competition to prevent government from becoming insulated from the society it governs? Hong Kong’s institutional task is therefore no longer simply to contain political conflict. It is to develop a more constructive form of political contestation within the present constitutional framework—one that preserves stability while enabling legislators to test policy, represent social concerns and improve administrative performance.
They also revealed a structural difficulty. The Basic Law grants Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy, but it does not give the city unilateral authority to redesign its constitutional system. Fundamental electoral reform depends on decisions extending beyond Hong Kong’s local institutions. Demands for major constitutional change therefore repeatedly encountered limits that the city’s legislature and government could not resolve independently. The result was a growing mismatch among public expectations, constitutional authority and political strategy. The failure of the 2015 electoral reform proposal deepened distrust, while the unrest of 2019 transformed institutional disagreement into a wider confrontation over
environment for policy implementation. At the same time, however, they narrowed organised opposition and reduced the range of political positions represented within formal institutions. The reforms therefore resolved one set of governance problems while creating another. The central question is no longer whether legislators can prevent the government from acting. It is whether they can provide enough challenge, information and representation to help the government act more effectively.
Why an executive-led system still needs scrutiny Administrative and representative institutions perform different functions. An administrative system is designed to implement decisions. It values hierarchy, coordination, specialist knowledge and policy continuity. A legislature should perform a different, though complementary, role. It should communicate social pressures, question policy assumptions, expose disagreement and oblige officials to explain their decisions publicly. These functions do not require permanent opposition to the government. Nor do they require legislators to challenge state sovereignty or the constitutional order. A legislator may accept executive
These disputes reflected genuine democratic aspirations as well as competing interpretations of Hong Kong’s autonomy. authority, identity and sovereignty. Legislative procedures became instruments of political struggle, and ordinary policy questions were frequently absorbed into disputes over Hong Kong’s constitutional future.
page 10
The Ustinov Scholarly Journal
leadership while still asking whether a housing programme is fair, whether a transport policy is workable or whether social assistance reaches its intended recipients.
The reforms introduced after 2020 sought to end this instability. Candidate eligibility became more tightly regulated, the electoral system was redesigned and the composition of the Legislative Council changed substantially. Under the current arrangement, 20 of its 90 seats are directly elected through geographical constituencies, while the remainder are returned through functional constituencies and the Election Committee.
Scrutiny of this kind may be particularly important in an executive-led system. Governments often possess extensive technical information, but information circulating within bureaucracies can be selective. Officials may be reluctant to question established policies, report implementation failures or challenge decisions that have already acquired political authority. Administrative systems are therefore vulnerable not only to a lack of information, but also to the filtering of inconvenient information.
These changes reduced the risk of legislative paralysis, strengthened executive–legislative coordination and created a more predictable
A legislature can provide an alternative channel. Representatives can identify problems that are visible in neighbourhoods but less visible page 11
The Pantomath
from government headquarters. They can connect individual complaints to broader policy patterns, translate public frustration into concrete proposals and require departments to respond to evidence that might otherwise remain dispersed. Hong Kong’s legislature should therefore be judged by more than the speed with which it passes bills. Legislative efficiency is valuable, but excessive emphasis on coordination can produce a chamber that eyes too much on confirming executive decisions instead of reviewing and improving them. The emerging risk is thus a transition from high-conflict, low-governance politics to low-conflict, low-competition politics. In the current political environment, political competition need not mean a thorough return to conflicts over constitutional questions. It can instead concern who understands local communities better, who detects policy failures earlier and who develops more credible responses to housing shortages, demographic ageing, youth insecurity or uneven economic development. This is competition over governance capacity.
page 12
Ustinov College’s Scholarly Journal
Such competition matters because effective government depends on comparison. When alternative policy approaches are not visible, officials have fewer incentives to reconsider established assumptions. When legislators lack incentives to raise difficult questions, they may concentrate more on demonstrating political reliability than on proving representative effectiveness.
deviated from broader problems that can be identified, aggregated and addressed politically.
However, public dissatisfaction does not disappear simply because it becomes less visible. It may instead become fragmented, private and harder for institutions to interpret.
Can elections encourage governance competition?
Political quiet should therefore not be confused with durable stability. Longterm stability requires institutions capable of recognising grievances before they become crises. It requires intermediaries who can convert social pressures into specific demands that the political system can process. Before 2020, Hong Kong’s intermediary institutions did not always contain political conflict; even at times, parties, legislators and other political organisations intensified it. But the failure of one form of political mediation does not eliminate the need for mediation itself. If representative institutions become too weak, social concerns risk appearing as disconnected individual complaints
The legislature’s value therefore lies partly in its capacity to serve as a buffer between society and administration. It should neither reproduce the confrontational politics of the past nor become merely an extension of the executive.
Hong Kong’s present elections operate within clearly restricted boundaries. Candidate qualification is institutionalised, the proportion of directly elected seats has fallen and the organised political alternatives available to voters have narrowed. Any assessment of their significance must begin by acknowledging these constraints. Restricted elections, however, are not necessarily devoid of political function. They may still create incentives for candidates to cultivate local support, maintain constituency networks and differentiate themselves through competence, responsiveness and public service. For much of the previous decade, electoral competition in Hong Kong was heavily structured
The same principle applies within the legislature. Political loyalty does not logically require administrative conformity. by constitutional divisions over democracy, autonomy and relations with the central government. With that form of competition now substantially constrained, elections may become more focused on governance performance and local issues such as housing, transport, social care and community services. Such competition would be narrower and more regulated than before, but could still provide a basis for candidates to differentiate themselves through responsiveness and policy performance.
Representatives who neglect constituency concerns should face reputational or electoral costs. Those who identify problems and secure policy improvements should receive some political advantage.
The crucial issue is not simply whether several candidates stand for election. It is whether they have sufficient incentives and political space to question policy implementation, expose administrative shortcomings and show responsiveness.
The same principle applies within the legislature. Political loyalty does not logically require administrative conformity. A legislator may be committed to the state and constitutional order while disagreeing with the design or implementation of a government policy - preserving room for such disagreement can improve the quality of information available to the executive.
Even elections among candidates with broadly similar constitutional positions may still generate meaningful competition, but only when differences in performance have consequences.
The Ustinov Scholarly Journal
Without such incentives, elections may generate participation without substantial accountability. They risk becoming mechanisms for confirming institutional legitimacy rather than instruments for evaluating representative performance.
From restored order to effective governance Hong Kong’s recent political trajectory is described in official discourse as “a movement from disorder to governance and from governance to prosperity”, while critiques view it as a shift from political pluralism to highly restricted participation. The restoration of institutional order addressed an immediate political crisis. Moving from order to effective governance, however, requires more than a legislature that cooperates. The choice is therefore not simply between disorder and political uniformity. A third possibility exists: an orderly executive-led system that permits meaningful competition over governance performance. Whether Hong Kong can develop such a model will depend on its institutional rules, the incentives facing political actors, and the willingness of officials and legislators to treat policy disagreement as a normal part of effective government. After restoring order, the political “prosperity” should therefore rely increasingly on institutional learning–on whether the political institutions can listen, compare, adapt and improve.
page 13
The Pantomath
Ustinov College’s Scholarly Journal
Symbolism and Social Identity in Bronze Age Asian Pottery
to represent clan signs, serving as material “signatures” in transhumant networks. Interpretations grounded in ethnographic analogy, among Kazakh or Turkmen potters, revealed how symbolic motifs can express genealogical continuity and cosmological balance (Dupuy et al., 2021; Baumer, 2019; Luneau et al., 2022). East Asia’s contributions are equally significant. In the Yangshao and Majiayao painted pottery traditions, motifs such as spirals, triangles, and anthropomorphic designs have been reinterpreted as cosmological diagrams or shamanic symbols (Liu, 2004; Underhill, 2013). Later Bronze Age ceramic traditions, including those of the Erlitou and Shang cultures, incorporated motifs echoing bronze vessel iconography, reinforcing connections between pottery production, ritual hierarchy, and elite ideology (Campbell, 2014; Thorp, 2006).
Pranati Prakash MA Archaeology
The earliest pottery in Asia appears in East Asia, where Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers produced ceramics long before agriculture (Craig et al., 2013; Kuzmin, 2013). Finds from Xianrendong and Yuchanyan in southern China dates to about 18,000–16,000 cal BP (Craig et al., 2013). Pottery is deeply intertwined with human life; it mirrors shifts in technology, economy, and belief (Bozdemir & Gençyılmaz, 2025). Bronze Age ceramics functioned as both utilitarian vessels and symbols of community identity, belief, and status. Decorative motifs encoded meanings tied to ritual and authority, while mortuary variation reflected cultural diversity. Childe (1951, 2024) viewed these stylistic shifts as evidence of diffusion, while Renfrew’s (1987, 1990) peer-polity model reframed them as expressions of intergroup exchange and pluralism. Pottery, as one of the most ubiquitous forms of material culture, functions not only as a utilitarian technology but also as a communicative medium through which worldviews are expressed, reinforced, and transmitted (Hodder, 2012). In East and South Asia, spiral, sunburst, and serpent-like designs often evoke mythological or cosmological associations, articulating ancient ideas about fertility, the sun, and cyclical renewal (Allchin & Allchin, 1982). By contrast, in Central and Western Asia, geometric or incised motifs may signify social groupings such as clan identities, trade affiliations, or ritual roles (Courty & Roux, 1995; Kohl, 2007). However, cross-cultural interpretation remains uneven, partly due to differing archaeological terminologies, excavation practices, and interpretive frameworks across regions (Dupuy et al., 2021).
page 14
Learning to read the surface Historically, studies on pottery were mostly dominated by functionalism and typological classification. Pottery was categorised primarily to establish cultural phases or trade connections (Lefrancq et al., 2019; Nieuwenhuyse et al., 2017). Motifs were treated as chronological markers, rarely considered in social or symbolic terms. Classic works such as Wheeler’s (1953) The Indus Civilization and Chang’s (1963) The Archaeology of Ancient China often prioritised
culture. Researchers began to view motifs not as mere decorations but as signifiers of social identity, gender, and ritual symbolism (Hegmon, 1992; Hodder, 1982). Several theoretical frameworks now structure how this material is read. Structuralism, developed by Claude Lévi-Strauss (1981), analyses cultural phenomena through underlying binary oppositions like raw/cooked or nature/ culture, viewing motifs as elements of universal mental structures that generate meaning via relational contrasts rather than isolated symbols. Material symbolism and agency theory, advanced by Alfred Gell (1998) and Ian Hodder (2012), treat artifacts as agents with social efficacy. Gell emphasises how objects like art trap agency in networks of intention and effect, while Hodder’s contextual archaeology sees material
Ethnographic studies throughout Asia highlight how pottery decoration mediates memory, ritual, and social continuity. stratigraphy and typology over interpretation (Rice, 1999; Sinopoli, 1991). Functional interpretations dominated in part because of the limited methodological toolkit available for inferring intangible meaning; motifs were frequently relegated to shorthand descriptors in catalogues, dissociated from sociocultural contexts (Marghussian et al., 2021). However, influenced by processual and post-processual archaeology, attention has since shifted toward the symbolic and social roles of material
culture as symbolically embedded in strategy and ritual, beyond mere adaptation. Communicative materiality, as explored by Tilley and Miller (1984), posits that objects’ designs actively communicate social meanings, shaping identities and relationships; this shifts analysis from mere representation to how materials actively participate in social communication and transformation (Swenson & Cipolla, 2021). However, modern discussions of identity in archaeology increasingly frame pottery decoration as performance.
Through making and displaying motifs, communities reasserted ethnic belonging, social rank, or spiritual status, a tension between local identity and inter-regional aesthetics (Jones, 1997; Insoll, 2004). Ethnographic studies throughout Asia highlight how pottery decoration mediates memory, ritual, and social continuity. Among traditional potters in Central Asia, motifs often carry blessings of fertility or protection against spirits (Rizaeva, 2025; Dupuy et al., 2021). In East and Southeast Asia, motifs can signify clan membership or mythic ancestry, embedding ceramics within systems of kinship and ritual identity (Balbaligo, 2015; Lin, 2013; Womack, 2024). Such ethnographies demonstrate that the act of decorating pottery is itself a social ritual, embedding makers within ancestral narratives (Sand, 2004; Higham, 1996; Kenoyer, 1998). However, studies caution against linear continuity assumptions, noting that symbolic logics observed in modern ethnographic contexts cannot be directly transposed to prehistoric societies separated by vast temporal and cultural distance (Kristiansen & Suchowska-Ducke, 2015). Analogies are most persuasive when grounded in similar economic and ecological frameworks, such as agro-pastoral or ritual economies (Castellanos Montes, 2012). Triangulating ethnographic analogy with contextual archaeology and experimental studies strengthens interpretation while mitigating overextension.
The Ustinov Scholarly Journal
Bronze Age exchange routes, proto-Silk Road corridors, and maritime contacts likely facilitated circulation of ideas and symbolic systems. Regional dialects of a shared grammar In South Asia, a re-examination of painted motifs on Harappan Black and Red Ware and post-Harappan ceramics suggested links between motif symbolism and ideological structure (Kumar, 2019). Studies of animal and plant motifs revealed possible connections to fertility cults or seasonal rituals (Kenoyer, 1998; Chakrabarti, 2004; Dutta, 2009). At sites such as Banawali and Lothal, repetitive motifs and vessel placement patterns strengthened the view that pottery participated in ritual performances rather than mere domestic use (Gupta, 2008; Schumann, 2024). In Central and West Asia, research on Bactria-Margiana and Andronovo ceramics showed how decoration encoded pastoral identity and regional affiliation. Incised geometric motifs are hypothesised
Across these regions, scholars increasingly connected pottery motifs to social identity, gender, lineage, locality, or ritual office. Painted or incised patterns could differentiate communities while maintaining shared symbolic grammars that bound regional groups together. The recurring appearance of certain motifs, spirals, chevrons, stylised vegetation, anthropomorphic signs, across Asia suggests long-term patterns of symbolic convergence. Some may result from diffusion through trade and migration. Bronze Age exchange routes, proto-Silk Road corridors, and maritime contacts likely facilitated circulation of ideas and symbolic systems. Similarities between Central Asian and South Asian motifs, for example, may reflect interaction between the BMAC and the Indus sphere through merchants and craftspeople (Zhang & Yang, 2023; Hiebert, 1995; Pittman, 1984). Yet, many of the parallels may also represent independent innovations rooted in shared human cognition and visual grammar, since geometric symbolism appears universally in early communities as an abstract language of order, motion, and fertility. Thus, it can be said that interaction and innovation coexisted, trade very likely fostering shared designs across Asia even as communities localised their meanings closer to home, leaving Bronze Age pottery as a ceramic script of social memory that scholars are still learning to read.
page 15
The Pantomath
Ustinov College’s Scholarly Journal
‘Only Burger, Chips and Pop’: McDonald’s as a Contextual Safeguarding Context for Young Managers Aged 18–25
Research shows that frontline employees are more prone to scrutiny and often witness harmful, risky, and/or threatening behaviours, and managers are then called to de-escalate incidents with either customers, colleagues or partners.
Ageliki Sofia Dimitriou PhD Philosophy
McDonald’s is one of the world’s largest hospitality employers; however, for those working in their restaurants, the fast-food chain is more than ‘only burger, chips and pop’. These feelings stem from the fact that the fast-food place is a space where young people can work, socialise and develop. Rather than viewing young managers working in these environments as solely enactors of safeguarding, this article acknowledges the needs and values of young people and explores McDonald’s under an important Contextual Safeguarding context. In recent years, views on safeguarding for young people have changed, as society has become more aware of their everyday experiences, worldviews, and the risks they face. Traditional child protection frameworks are family-centric, often overlooking the harm young people may experience beyond their family home and placing much of the responsibility of the safety of youngsters on parents and/or guardians (Firmin, 2023). In 2015, Professor Carlene Firmin developed the Contextual Safeguarding (CS) framework, which sought to make the wider community of young people also responsible for their safeguarding (Firmin and Lloyd, 2023). Firmin identified that by understanding the relationships and power dynamics formed by young people, such as those in peer groups, and other environments in which they socialise and spend time, it will be easier to act on harm and safeguard them accordingly to their specific needs. Some settings would include their
page 16
The Ustinov Scholarly Journal
schools and colleges, neighbourhoods, hang outs with their peers as well as online spaces (Firmin and Lloyd, 2023). These extend the application of Contextual Safeguarding to their place of work; as it remains under-explored, McDonald’s restaurant appears to be appropriate for us to apply this to. McDonald’s restaurants today aim to be a hub for the community, with their mission statement being ‘to provide a fun and safe environment where our customers can enjoy good food made with quality ingredients at affordable prices’ and that they have succeeded in attracting generations of people to their restaurants (McDonald’s, 2026a). If young people are not eating at McDonald’s with family and friends, then a substantial number of them are employed by the company, many of whom for the first time. Data shows that 70% of McDonald’s employees are under the age of 25 and lots who are a part of that percentage progress to management roles (McDonald’s, 2026b). Employment at McDonald’s
has been branded as ‘McJobs’, often described as being “ideal” for lowerclass, “non-academic” individuals (Etzioni, 1986). These stereotypes have led to customers making dismissive comments such as “it’s only burger, chips and pop” to insult staff members. Insults like that one have resulted in people perceiving the social aspect of hospitality to be ‘informal’, leading to relationship building among staff. But these relationships built can also bring unwanted ‘banter’; if not managed correctly, this can result in psychological or emotional pressures (Poulston, 2008). In hospitality, high levels of emotional labour are expected of young managers under time constraints and the heavy burden of negative customer interactions which may render them vulnerable to exploitation and emotional strain (Edmodson, 1999). Research shows that frontline employees are more prone to scrutiny and often witness harmful, risky, and/or threatening behaviours, and managers are then called to de-escalate incidents with either customers, colleagues or partners. It is also important to consider that research has found employees with strong interpersonal skills and young women in customer-facing roles tend to receive the most unwanted attention from colleagues and customers (Poulston, 2008; Hedlin and Klope, 2023). Additionally, industry surveys show that hospitality employees feel overworked and lack prioritisation skills to effectively
page 17
The Pantomath
manage their time and responsibilities (Fältén et al., 2024). All these pressures can cause emotional distress and contradict the needs of young adults who are navigating changes throughout their youth. In early adulthood – or between the ages 18 and 25 – young people are discovering their identities and often pushing boundaries to understand their values and motivations (Arnett, 2004). Research suggests that they highly value their friendship groups, ‘fitting in’ with others, and ‘standing out’ to be an individual; they want to find fulfilling and meaningful work, they embrace working in a team, but while requiring autonomy and independence (Yeager, 2017). This healthy mindset reflects their wider motivations and needs that shape decisions, how they pursue opportunities, and their engagement with work. These characteristics directly contradict the highly rationalised and efficiencyfocused nature of hospitality work (Ritzer, 2013). As a context for young people, McDonald’s has faced heavy criticism throughout the years. In 2023, over 100 employees reported a “toxic culture” in restaurants, where allegations of sexual assault, harassment, racism, and bullying were made, with managers often being placed at the centre of them (Nanji et al., 2023). In response to the incidents, McDonald’s has since released the ‘Valuing and Respecting Our People Report’, in which it has declared that its employees are a priority, with initiatives to enhance eLearning
Ustinov College’s Scholarly Journal
Modules and create in-person training programmes among other measures (McDonald’s, 2026c). McDonald’s has also partnered with the Global Center for Contextual Safeguarding (GCCS) to conduct research on safeguarding inside its restaurants. Taking into consideration the large number of young people employed by the company, these reports highlight the presence of Extra-Familial Risk and Harm (ERFH) not just for the employees but for young customers. The front-line team tasked with embedding these initiatives in the restaurants are managers – many of whom are aged 18–25. Overall, this article demonstrates that, through the Contextual Safeguarding approach, McDonald’s restaurants are not ‘only burger, chips and pop’, but rather an extrafamilial context which should be considered throughout safeguarding research concerning young people. Considering this is particularly necessary for young managers who occupy the contradictory role of being young people themselves, who need safeguarding agents. Recognising hospitality environments as safeguarding contexts is essential to understand how to support and empower young people outside their family home.
References Arnett, J.J. (2004) Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens through the Twenties, New York: Oxford University Press. Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. [Accessed 17/03/2026]. Etzioni, A. (1986) ‘The fast-food factories: McJobs are bad for kids’, The Washington Post, 24 August. [Accessed 16/1/2026]. Fältén, R., Berntson, E. and Bernhard-Oettel, C. (2024) “How are organisational conditions related to illegitimate tasks among managers and their subordinates in the public sector? A Swedish study,” Work and stress, 38(3), pp. 270–292. Available at: https://doi.org/1 0.1080/02678373.2024.2309627 [Accessed 19/02/2026]. Firmin, C. and Lloyd, J. (2023) Contextual Safeguarding: The Next Chapter. 1st ed. Edited by C. Firmin and J. Lloyd. Bristol, UK: Policy Press. Available at: https://doi. org/10.46692/9781447366454 [Accessed 05/10/2025]. Hedlin, M. and Klope, E. (2023) When the flirting guest’s age is crucial: Young people in the hospitality industry reflect on sexual harassment. Sage Journals YOUNG 31 (5). DOI: 10.1177/11033088231180036 [Accessed 28/01/2026].
Unravelling the Mystery of Dark Matter Martyna Winiarska PhD Astrophysics
Most of the time, when I tell people I do a PhD in astrophysics, the reactions I get are shock, fear, and a smidge of disbelief. Physics has this reputation of being both admirable and insanely complicated. The question that always follows – which is ‘’what do you do in astronomy, exactly?’’ – is often caveated by ‘’explain it as best you can, but of course I won’t understand much of it’’. I think after seeing horrifying equations during physics classes at school, people forget just how intuitive physics is. We unknowingly use those equations every day. We know that a ball must fall once it is thrown, and we can predict how gravity or wind will affect it, so we can catch the ball.
McDonald’s (2026a) Our Mission and Values. Available at: https://corporate.mcdonalds. com/corpmcd/our-company/who-we-are/ our-values.html [Accessed 14/05/2026]. McDonalds (2026b) Newsroom. Available online: https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/engb/newsroom.html#:~:text=McDonald’s%20 has%20more%20than%201%2C450%20 restaurants%20across,service%20that%20 our%20customers%20know%20and%20trust. [Accessed: 16/03/2026]. McDonalds (2026c) Valuing and Respecting Our People Report 2025. Available at: https:// www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/newsroom/ our-people-our-priority-2025.html [Accessed 16/03/2026]. Nanji, N., Conway, Z., Layhe, E. (2023) McDonald’s workers speak out over sexual abuse claims. BBC. Available at: https:// www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65388445 [Accessed 10/10/2025]. Poulston, J. (2008) “Metamorphosis in hospitality: A tradition of sexual harassment,” International journal of hospitality management, 27(2), pp. 232–240. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2007.07.013. [Accessed 13/02/2026]. Ritzer, G. (2013) The McDonaldization of Society: 20th Anniversary Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Yeager, D.S. (2017) “Social and Emotional Learning Programs for Adolescents,” The Future of children, 27(1), pp. 73–94. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1353/foc.2017.0004 [Accessed 23/10/2025].
page 18
page 19
The Pantomath
Let me illustrate with another example using gravity. Have you ever seen a big circle of people in a town square? If you have: even though you can’t see exactly what’s happening, you intuitively know they must be surrounding something. The group at the square might be admiring a street performer, or surrounding a small statue, or noticing someone has just spotted a cute dog in the centre. The point is, a group of people in a circle at the square must be surrounding something inside of that circle. It’s a simple principle; it’s very similar to how astrophysicists know of dark matter. Dark matter sounds scary and mysterious, and it definitely is both of those things. But the principle by which we know it exists is actually relatively simple. Think of our own galaxy – the Milky Way – for example. Thanks to some great telescopes, we can see and measure how fast our galaxy is rotating – which is at about 220 km/s. Yes, per second! But when we measured the mass of all the stuff in our galaxy that we can see, we found that it made no sense for our galaxy to actually be rotating this fast – unless there was some extra mass in the galaxy that we couldn’t see... We didn’t just measure the mass and speed of one galaxy though; we consistently found that galaxies all around us should have a lot more mass than just the mass we could see. And since we are modern physicists (or physicists in the 1900s) we no longer use Greek words or letters to describe phenomena; we just call them what
Ustinov College’s Scholarly Journal
they are. So, this extra mass that we couldn’t see was called ‘dark matter’! We now also know that dark matter makes up 85% of the mass of our Universe. Dark matter influences how the Universe evolved, how the galaxies in it (like our own Milky Way) form and grow, and even what fate awaits our Universe! Dark matter is a crucial piece we are trying to fit in the puzzle of our Universe and the place we have in it. Unfortunately, dark matter remains unseen. However, just like the circle of people at the town square surrounding a performer, we can also find some clever tricks using things we can see, to understand what we cannot - and find out more about dark matter. I am trying to find out more about it in my PhD. Although there are many questions we have regarding dark matter, a PhD is all about tackling one specialised area. My own specific area is trying to solve a big problem we have regarding the dark matter’s place in galaxies; to be exact, what the structure of dark matter in galaxy centres is. As I described before, we can use the speed of a galaxy’s rotation to estimate the total amount of matter in that galaxy. However, things get complicated the closer to the galaxy centre we move in. We know there must be some dark matter there (since dark matter is probably everywhere – both inside and outside of galaxies), but we can fit various amounts of dark and regular matter in the centres of galaxies, and get the same speed
out… So how can we distinguish how much of the mass comes from dark matter, and how much of that mass comes from the regular matter? These questions are particularly interesting for astronomers because the centres of galaxies are where some of the most exciting physics of which you might have heard is happening – like supermassive black holes, lots of starbursts, and stellar bars. I use stellar bars – big structures in the centres of galaxies – to understand the structure and behaviour of dark matter in the centres of galaxies. Although you might be confused by the phrase ‘stellar bar’, if you were to see a photo of a galaxy with one then there’s no doubt you would spot it immediately. Figure 1 shows my favourite bar, in galaxy NGC1300. It is a long structure at the galaxy’s centre that is extremely bright because it is made up of millions of stars moving on specific orbits. Bars affect how galaxies evolve and have a huge impact on the other components in the galaxy, like gas and dark matter. What’s even more interesting, is that around 2/3rds of galaxies around us have such a stellar bar – even our own Milky Way has one!
The top row of figure 2 shows us the stars in this simulated galaxy; on the top left plot, we can see the surface density - which shows the prominent stellar bar this galaxy has formed over time (see the bright blue structure at the centre). But another way in which we can find where the stellar bar is located is by looking at the overdensities (areas much more dense compared to areas surrounding it) and under-densities (areas much less dense compared to areas surrounding it). In the top right corner, we can see the over-densities (red) and underdensities (blue) for the stars in the same galaxy as in the top left plot. The over-densities show us the structures in the galaxy – the bar is very visible! We can also see some spiral arms
further out. What’s important for us is that in the centre of the plot we can see the red line (the stellar bar), and the blue region at the right angles to it. This very beautiful pattern is called the butterfly pattern (remember what I said about astronomers nowadays naming things as they see them). A butterfly pattern is a clear signature of a bar - and I drew a butterfly on top of the plot for ease of spotting it!. And now if we look at the bottom row of the plot, we can see what the dark matter is doing in this galaxy. Indeed, in the bottom left corner, we can see there are hints of structure in dark matter (the dark bar) like the stars above show. There is some elongation in the yellow and orange part at the
centre – it is not just circular, as the purple region expands further out. But to really pinpoint our dark bar, we can look at the plot in the bottom right corner to search for our butterfly pattern – and indeed we do find one right at the centre! It is much weaker than the stellar bar signature above, but nonetheless, we have found our dark bar! I find such dark bars in almost all of the galaxies I investigate in the cosmological simulation. The fact that dark matter can form dark bars is another hint for us about what the dark matter is doing at galaxy centres!
Figure 2
So stellar bars – that are at galaxy centres, have a big impact on galaxies, and are super common – have become my circle of people in the town square and extremely useful for investigating dark matter deep inside of the galaxies.
In my work investigating stellar bars and dark matter, I use cosmological simulations. These are simulations of the Universe with (almost) all the physics and physical processes we know of, to replicate the Universe we live in. They allow me to study the galaxies in detail across times, to see how the stellar bars have affected dark matter. And what I’ve been finding recently, is that stellar bars can cause dark matter to form dark bars! This means that the orbits that make stellar bars can also ‘trap’ dark matter and cause it to move in the same orbits as well. Dark bars are not as prominent as stellar bars, but they form soon after stellar bars and follow the evolution of stellar bars across times. To illustrate what that looks like, I included an image from one of my galaxies in Figure 2. Figure 1
page 20
The Ustinov Scholarly Journal
page 21
The Pantomath
Ustinov College’s Scholarly Journal
Cognitive dependency and AI regulation Regulation of AI-Chatbot Induced Cognitive Atrophy Loveleen Jain LLM candidate in Intellectual Property Law at Durham University
“Chat GPT this”, “Chat GPT that”, let’s chat about the trade-off between productivity and cognitive independence. Beneath the excitement around Gen AI lies a deeper question: As we outsource more thinking to machines, are we gaining productivity at the expense of our own intellectual development? Introduction
Objective
While the deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education, research, and workplaces may initially boost productivity, growing evidence points to AI-chatbot-induced cognitive atrophy due to over-reliance.1 Neuroscientific research from MIT Media Lab suggests that using AI to draft essays results in “cognitive debt” where users exhibit less brain activity and significantly reduced memory retention.2 This is already observable: a recent National Education Union poll found that 66% of teachers report an active decline in core skills such as thinking, creativity, writing and conversation in students in England.3 Dr Advait Sarkar, affiliated lecturer at University of Cambridge and researcher at Microsoft, suggested that by automating lower-order tasks, AI inadvertently deprives users of higher-order evaluation resulting in “intuition rust” where even expert researchers lose confidence in their unaided judgment over time.4 The author thereby contends that cognitive atrophy isn’t just an issue for children but also seasoned professionals.
This paper examines the existing regulatory frameworks addressing the psychological harms of AI dependency, and argues for a framework that mandates system-level architectural guardrails and an evolved educational paradigm.
page 22
Existing Regulation & Required Guardrails The European Union AI Act explicitly prohibits AI practises that deploy subliminal techniques or exploit vulnerabilities, such as age or mental capacity, to materially distort behaviour. However, it relies on a high threshold of “significant harm”.5 Because chatbot-induced cognitive debt or dopamine-driven dependency occurs gradually rather than through sudden trauma, it escapes the Act’s enforcement triggers. Similarly, if a product harms a user, the product liability law applies. However, proving that an AI tool caused a specific user’s decline in critical thinking remains an evidentiary nightmare. Because reactive legal frameworks cannot address a gradual erosion of human intellect, regulation must shift to mandate by-design architectural guardrails. Analysis from Cook underscores that while previous technologies (like calculators or GPS) merely offloaded cognitive nouns such
This is already observable: a recent National Education poll found that two-thirds of teachers report an active decline in core skills of thinking, creativity, writing and conversation skills in UK students. as data storage, retrieval, and basic operations. On the contrary, generative AI uniquely offloads cognitive verbs, including synthesizing, evaluating, and judging.6 When this substitution occurs during critical developmental windows (from birth to the mid-20s), the risk is not just cognitive atrophy, but cognitive foreclosure, thereby preventing critical thinking skills from ever developing in the first place.7 In the author’s opinion, governments must legislate three systemic interventions. AI platforms must require users to engage in a stepby-step dialogue forcing them to provide structured outlines, answer conceptual questions, or critically evaluate their own drafts before providing immediate, end-product answers.8 This reduces cognitive load without incurring cognitive debt. To counteract the addictive reward pathways, there must be mandatory session limits, built-in cool-down breaks, and strict prohibitions on emotionally manipulative AI responses simulating synthetic empathy to exploit vulnerable humans.9 Gen AI providers must be legally required to conduct pre-market psychological impact assessments. 1. www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/ pii/S2451958826001764?ref=cra_js_ challenge&fr=RR-1 2. www.media.mit.edu/projects/your-brainon-chatgpt/overview 3. www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/ apr/02/pupils-england-losing-thinkingskills-because-of-ai-survey 4. https://councilonstrategicrisks. org/2026/04/10/what-happens-to-humanthinking-when-ai-does-the-thinking-for-us 5. EU AI Act, Article 5 6. councilonstrategicrisks.org/2026/04/10/ what-happens-to-human-thinking-when-aidoes-the-thinking-for-us 7. www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/ the-algorithmic-mind/202603/adults-loseskills-to-ai-children-never-build-them 8. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ jcal.70210 9. www.techuk.org/resource/whenpersonalisation-becomes-manipulation-aiautonomy-and-the-rights-you-cannot-see. html
Image created by the author using Canva
Conclusion Systemic guardrails cannot succeed in isolation. They must be paired with an evolved educational paradigm centered on foundational reasoning skills and AI literacy. Societies have historically abandoned obsolete physical skills, but survived because structured education evolved to fill the intellectual gap. In the machine age, true AI literacy dictates that foundational intellectual skills such as formal logic and rigorous argumentation become mandatory
components of the core curriculum before students are ever permitted to encounter AI as a substitute capability. Without establishing these independent cognitive baselines first, users cannot effectively audit, challenge, or guide the systems they rely on, resulting in a dangerous homogenization of thought and a systemic decline in cognitive resilience. The author is currently developing a venture to address the decline of the critical cognitive
skills due to AI over-reliance with the Durham University Venture School.
European Union. (2024). Regulation - EU - 2024/1689 - EN - EUR-Lex. In Europa.eu. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ TXT/?uri=CELEX:32024R1689
Kos’myna, N. (2025). Project Overview ‹ Your Brain on ChatGPT – MIT Media Lab. In MIT Media Lab. https://www.media.mit.edu/ projects/your-brain-on-chatgpt/overview/
Cognitive foreclosure may not be. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/ blog/the-algorithmic-mind/202603/adultslose-skills-to-ai-children-never-build-them
Facini, A. (2026). What Happens to Human Thinking When AI Does the Thinking for Us? The Council on Strategic Risks. In The Council on Strategic Risks - Anticipating, Analyzing, and Addressing Systemic Risks. https:// councilonstrategicrisks.org/2026/04/10/ what-happens-to-human-thinking-when-aidoes-the-thinking-for-us/
Noorbehbahani, F., & Oyibo, K. (2026). AI-overdependence and human cognitive decline: Hazards, evidence, and mitigation strategies. Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 22, 101102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. chbr.2026.101102
Weale, S. (2026). Pupils in England are losing their thinking skills because of AI, survey suggests. In the Guardian. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/ technology/2026/apr/02/pupils-englandlosing-thinking-skills-because-of-ai-survey
Sun, D., Zheng, Y., Xu, J., & Yang, Z. (2026). When Generative <scp>AI</scp> Meets Socratic Method: Investigating Programming Learning Dynamics Through Behaviours, Interaction Qualities and Perceptions. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 42(2). https:// doi.org/10.1002/jcal.70210
When Personalisation Becomes Manipulation: AI, Autonomy, and the Rights You Cannot See. (2025). In Techuk.org. https://www. techuk.org/resource/when-personalisationbecomes-manipulation-ai-autonomy-and-therights-you-cannot-see.html
Ultimately, the preservation of human intellect cannot be left to the self-regulation of tech monopolies. Without legally mandated system guardrails that enforce cognitive friction, protect user autonomy, and build baseline human literacy, society risks permanently trading its collective critical capacity for automated efficiency.
References
Facini, A. (2026). What Happens to Human Thinking When AI Does the Thinking for Us? The Council on Strategic Risks. In The Council on Strategic Risks - Anticipating, Analyzing, and Addressing Systemic Risks. https:// councilonstrategicrisks.org/2026/04/10/ what-happens-to-human-thinking-when-aidoes-the-thinking-for-us/
The Ustinov Scholarly Journal
Timothy Cook M.Ed. (2026, March 22). AI-driven cognitive atrophy is recoverable.
page 23
The Pantomath
Ustinov College’s Scholarly Journal
What singleness does, and does not, establish For the Bank, singleness means that every form of sterling must be generally accepted and interchangeable at par. A pound in an account should be worth the pound in a pocket, without users pricing the credit risk of issuers into each payment.2 Andrew Bailey connects that uniformity to settlement in central-bank money; Sarah Breeden adds that closed or non-interoperable private rails could threaten financial stability and monetary sovereignty.3 A common unit of account coordinates contracts, prices and payment obligations across the economy.
“Singleness of Money” or Sound Bite? Re-examining the Bank of England’s Case Against Stablecoins Andrew Soji George LLM in Corporate Laws
Introduction Stablecoins are no longer those used to move between crypto trades. This is because they are becoming payment and settlement rails, particularly for cross-border transfers and tokenised markets.1 That shift in how they are used makes the Bank of England’s objection consequential. If a sterling token can circulate widely but trades at 99 pence when confidence slips, then it means the pound has begun to fragment. Yet, the harder comparison is not between a bank deposit and TerraUSD. It is between a tokenised bank deposit and a legally ring-fenced stablecoin backed one-for-one by genuine liquid assets. page 24
This article thus argues that the Bank’s ‘singleness of money’ doctrine supplies a coherent reason for caution, but its present application overstates the latter comparison. Once reserve quality, segregation and redemption are held constant, the risk gap narrows sharply. Singleness then begins to do a second job: protecting bank deposit funding from disintermediation. This protection may be legitimate, but it should be defended openly rather than folded into a neutral account of money.
But commercial-bank deposits are not naturally risk-free pounds. At common law they are debts owed by banks.4 Their everyday parity with cash is produced by prudential supervision, resolution law, statutory deposit protection, lender-of-last-resort liquidity and final settlement in central-bank reserves. A tokenised deposit inherits that institutional package because the ledger changes while the issuer and underlying claim do not. A non-bank stablecoin ordinarily does not. The Bank, therefore, is right to identify a structural difference but wrong to treat it as an immutable property of the labels. Indeed, perfect singleness is not delivered even now. Cash withdrawal fees, card-acquiring costs, acceptance limits and settlement delays create small differences in purchasing power. Bidder and others accordingly describe singleness as a spectrum, while Hemingway’s model suggests that modest deviations can coexist with an efficient allocation.5 The useful regulatory question is not whether every friction has vanished. It is based on whether deviations are predictable and trivial; or, whether they expose holders to a run, loss or broken redemption promise instead.
Where the Bank’s case holds up
Where the doctrine overreaches
The strongest case for caution begins with redemption. A stablecoin can promise par on demand while investing the proceeds in assets that cannot be sold at par on demand. If holders expect others to redeem first, individually rational withdrawals can produce the illiquidity that they fear. This is the familiar run logic identified by Diamond and Dybvig, but distributed ledgers can compress it into a 24-hour market without a bank holiday, deposit guarantee or routine central-bank facility.6 Public observability may discipline an issuer in normal times and still accelerate flight during times of stress.
Overreach appears when the Bank compares the best version of bank money with the historical stablecoin market. Regulation should compare like with like. MiCA subjects relevant non-bank e-money tokens to one-forone safeguarding, at-par redemption and prescribed allocations to bank deposits and high-quality liquid assets.10 Similarly, the GENIUS Act requires one-to-one reserves and confines eligible assets to cash, Federal Reserve balances, insured demand deposits and Treasury instruments of no more than 93 days, with segregation and redemption rules.11 Neither young regime has faced a full cycle. Their significance is conceptual: risk can be regulated by function without requiring the token to be a bank deposit.
Terra’s collapse is the vivid warning, provided it is used carefully. Its UST token relied on an endogenous conversion into LUNA rather than a segregated pool of sterling assets. In May 2022, a run erased roughly $50 billion of value in three days; larger and more sophisticated holders exited earlier, while later retail sellers bore heavier losses.7 That episode does not prove that a gilt-backed stablecoin is unsafe. It proves the narrower and important proposition that a par label cannot substitute for exogenous collateral, workable incentives and a credible redemption channel. Nor is ‘fully backed’ self-defining. Tether previously held substantial commercial paper and certificates of deposit, phased out only by October 2022.8 Accounting assets may contain credit or duration risk, while forced sales depress prices. A mass redemption can therefore transmit stress into short-term funding markets like a run on a prime money-market fund.9 The legal route matters too. If reserves are not bankruptcy-remote, or ordinary holders cannot redeem promptly, then an impressive reserve figure does not secure par in practice. These points distinguish a weakly designed stablecoin from an insured deposit. Banks transform maturities, but depositors sit within an established safety net and payment infrastructure. Stablecoin holders can face the same mismatch without the same backstop, while secondary markets continuously publish doubts about redemption. The Bank is therefore justified in requiring safe and segregated assets, enforceable redemption, operational resilience and credible stress arrangements. In this justification, singleness does real work by directing attention to reliable conversion at par.
The Bank’s 2025 proposal makes the point. It does so because systemic sterling stablecoin would hold at least 40 per cent of its backing in unremunerated deposits at the Bank of England and up to 60 per cent in short-term UK government debt. Emergency liquidity is also contemplated.12 Such an issuer resembles a narrow bank and may bear less asset-side credit and maturity risk than a fractional-reserve bank whose tokenised deposits fund loans. Custody, cyber, governance and redemption risks remain but they should be measured more directly. The word ‘stablecoin’ is not a proxy for Terra. Conversely, tokenisation does not purify a bank’s balance sheet. Huang and Keister model stablecoins as safeasset-backed money and tokenised deposits as claims funding both safe and risky assets. Their result is deliberately conditional: bank-only money can support credit when regulatory costs are high, stablecoinonly money can be preferable when insured banks have strong risk-shifting incentives, and competition can be optimal between those cases.13 That is precisely why singleness cannot settle the institutional choice. It states the required monetary outcome, not who must issue the instrument or how society should trade payment safety against creation of bank credit. The institutional incentive becomes clearest in the proposed holding limits. The UK framework contemplates a temporary cap of £20,000 per individual, per systemic stablecoin, and £10 million for businesses in a means to contain rapid deposit outflows page 25
The Pantomath
while the system develops.14 These caps may be defensible as transitional macroprudential speed limits. They are not, however, conventional consumer protection: they constrain even a holder who knowingly chooses the safer reserve pool. Together with unremunerated central-bank backing, they preserve the relative attractiveness and funding base of commercial banks. That does not establish regulatory capture or bad faith. The Bank is responsible for financial stability, and a sudden loss of cheap retail deposits could raise banks’ funding costs, reduce lending or accelerate a crisis. The problem is one of candour and calibration. If the concern is the pace of disintermediation, then it should be tested against evidence on deposit outflows and credit substitution. Calling it singleness obscures a contestable distributional decision: bank depositors and borrowers receive the benefit of restrictions imposed on rival payment money. A better regime, however, would scale obligations to the mechanism that can break par. Central-bank reserves should attract the lowest liquidity requirement; short gilts should carry stress haircuts and liquidation buffers; riskier assets should attract higher capital or be excluded. Every payment stablecoin should have segregated reserves, independent assurance and prompt redemption at par. Systemic issuers could receive settlement access and collateralised emergency liquidity, but only while solvent and robustly supervised. Holding caps need sunset and review clauses. Interoperable conversion between stablecoins, tokenised deposits and central-bank money should be built into the payment architecture. As Ang and Bidder respectively argue, monetary status should follow function, and stability can produce practical singleness.15
Ustinov College’s Scholarly Journal
Conclusion
References
In conclusion, singleness is not only a sound bite. It captures an indispensable promise: sterling money must remain reliably exchangeable for every other pound at par, even under stress. But the doctrine is an outcome standard, not a complete institutional theory. It explains why an algorithmic coin or opaque reserve fund is not safe money. But there is no explanation why a ring-fenced token backed by central-bank reserves and short gilts is inherently more dangerous than a tokenised claim on a leveraged lending bank.
Ang (n 4) 19-21; Bidder and others (n 5) 27-31.
The Bank’s design therefore mixes two projects. One protects par convertibility; the other, however, protects banking’s deposit-funded model. Both may matter, but only the first follows directly from singleness. As tokenisation erodes the boundary between deposits, e-money and stablecoins, reserve quality, legal segregation, redemption, interoperability and systemic scale should determine the burden. And if those conditions are met, the decisive question is not what the instrument is called but whether its pound remains one when confidence is most needed.
Bank of England, Proposed Regulatory Regime for Sterling-denominated Systemic Stablecoins (Consultation Paper, 10 November 2025); Bank of England, The Role of Holding Limits for Sterling-denominated Systemic Stablecoins and a Potential Digital Pound (Financial Stability Paper, 10 November 2025).
Commercial bank deposit
Regulated sterling stablecoin
Bank of England, The Bank of England’s Approach to Innovation in Money and Payments (Discussion Paper, 30 July 2024) 9; Andrew Bailey, ‘New Prospects for Money’ (Speech, Bank of England, 10 July 2023).
A pound in the banking system
A pound on a regulated rail
Cheng and Finesi (n 9) 51, 58; Ulrich Bindseil, Regulatory Responses to the Financial Stability Implications of Stablecoins (SAFE Working Paper No 470, February 2026) 20-21.
Ring-fenced reserves Held 1:1 to back every token
David GW Birch and Simon Taylor, ‘The Stablecoin Era: The History and Future of Stablecoins’ (2026) 20 Journal of Payments Strategy & Systems 179, 179-81.
Short-term Uk goverment bonds High-quality liquid assets
Douglas W Diamond and Philip H Dybvig, ‘Bank Runs, Deposit Insurance, and Liquidity’ (1983) 91 Journal of Political Economy 401, 403-09. Foley v Hill (1848) 2 HLC 28, 9 ER 1002; Lance Ang, ‘Digital Currency as Money: The Case of Stablecoins’ (2026) Asian Journal of Comparative Law 1, 4-5. Gong Cheng and Stefano Finesi, Europe in the Global Stablecoin Debate: Risks and Opportunities (European Stability Mechanism Discussion Paper 27, May 2026) 18, 32-33.
The Bank is responsible for financial stability, and a sudden loss of cheap retail deposits could raise banks’ funding costs, reduce lending or accelerate a crisis.
Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins Act, Pub L No 119-27, § 4(a)(1), 139 Stat 419, 428-29 (2025). Jiageng Liu, Igor Makarov and Antoinette Schoar, Anatomy of a Run: The Terra Luna Crash (NBER Working Paper No 31160, April 2023) 1-3. 8 Gilles Chemla and others, Mind the Gap: How Stablecoins Can Secure the UK’s Financial Future (Imperial College London 2025) 32.
Interchangeable at par
Central bank reserves Held at the Bank of England
Redeemable at par £1 token = £1 at all times
Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 on markets in crypto-assets [2023] OJ L150/40, arts 49, 54 and 58. Rhys Bidder and others, Single Minded? Stablecoins and the Singleness of Money (Qatar Centre for Global Banking & Finance 2025) 5, 11-15; Benjamin Hemingway, A Model of Monetary Singleness (23 February 2026) 1-3. Sarah Breeden, ‘International Payment Rails: The Value of a Harmonised Gauge’ (Speech, Bank of England, 6 May 2025). Xuesong Huang and Todd Keister, Stablecoins vs Tokenized Deposits: The Narrow Banking Debate Revisited (Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Report No 1179, revised February 2026) 1-3.
page 26
Customer deposits Money in your bank account
Same outcome, same value
Trusted
Equivalent
Always £1
page 27
Ustinov College, Sheraton Park, Durham. DH1 4FL Tel: +44 (0)191 334 5470 durham.ac.uk/ustinov.college CUR/??/??/???