By Erin Hinson- Wherever you are reading this blog, I want you to look around and notice the personal objects you have with you. Whether in your office, at your home, on a bus or a train, chances are you are carrying or have displayed several objects that are personally significant. These objects – be... Continue Reading →
By Connal Parr- I suspect anyone who peppers his papers with “heuristic”, “hegemony”, “paradigm”, “problematic”, “reification”, “homology” and the like. One can sometimes work through unintelligible and certainly rebarbative papers only to realise at the end that, though what they say is sensible and in some ways perceptive, it could have been said almost entirely... Continue Reading →
By Martin McCleery – For over 20 years there has been an on-going scholarly debate over the nature of the Provisional Irish Republican Army’s [PIRA] campaign during the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’, largely conducted in the journal Terrorism and Political Violence. This discourse emerged in 1997 with an engagement between Robert White and Steve Bruce. White... Continue Reading →
By Caroline Magennis Like all of the readers of this blog, my own scholarship sits at the intersection of multiple disciplinary interests. I work on Northern Irish fiction, but of course I also attend conferences in Irish Studies and contemporary literary studies. This post, then, will be a reflection on what it has meant for... Continue Reading →
By James Bright – The existence of Ulster loyalism as a political and cultural phenomenon beyond Northern Ireland remains largely unacknowledged in the relevant literature. A story that remains obscure is the mobilisation of English and Scottish volunteers in locally recruited branches of the Ulster Volunteer Force and Ulster Defence Association during ‘the Troubles’. UVF... Continue Reading →
By Oliver O’Hanlon- “The best journalistic training ground in the world” is how editors, Deric Henderson and Ivan Little, described the ‘Troubles’ in their recently book on journalists’ recollections of reporting the Northern Ireland conflict. [1] The book draws on the memories of sixty-eight newspaper and television journalists, from Britain and Ireland. While reading it... Continue Reading →
By Maria Reyes Baztán – Internationalism has proven to be central to various world conflicts, but especially to ethnonationalist struggles. Across the world, different nationalist movements have attempted to internationalise themselves, comparing their own situations to that of other oppressed nations. This shared feeling of oppression can often be a source of connection that transcends... Continue Reading →
By Patrick James McDonagh- At the launch of the first ever ‘OUTing the Past’ in Belfast, in February 2018, David Norris generated controversy when he stated that the IRA kneecapped gays.[1] Responding to criticism, Norris later clarified his remarks, insisting that ‘I don’t know if those behind it may been acting as freelance but at... Continue Reading →
By Maria Dalton- ‘Who else have you been speaking to?’ ‘Do you know so and so? How are they? Will you tell them I said hello?’ As I write these questions, I am smiling, transported back to my research experiences in Northern Ireland over the past two summers. One of the lessons I quickly learned... Continue Reading →
