What would a feminist Northern Irish studies look like?

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...

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Hands Across the Sea: Paramilitary Loyalism in England and Scotland

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...

Journalists and the Troubles – ‘The best journalistic training ground in the world’.

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...

The Case of Northern Ireland and the Basque Country

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...

Queering Northern Ireland during the ‘Troubles’

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...

‘Who Else Have You Been Speaking To?’ The Role of Interpersonal Relationships in ‘Troubles’ Research

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...

Oral history and the Troubles: The importance of trust and the role of the interviewer

By Dieter Reinisch- As several of the blog posts of Writing the Troubles illustrate, oral history is a particularly controversial subject in Northern Ireland. The past years have been a difficult time for researchers looking to use interviews with former paramilitaries and those advocating political violence, particularly since the “Boston College (BC) Oral History Project”...

‘The end of British rule in the not too distant future?’: contested memories of Civil Rights

By Brian Hanley- The 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights movement has seen depressingly predictable arguments about who was, and who was not, involved in the early stages of that agitation. Claims by Sinn Féin’s Declan Kearney that republicans, including the IRA, were central to the genesis of civil rights provoked outrage from veterans as...

Revisiting the Past: Catholic Religious Sisters and the Conflict in Northern Ireland.

By Briege Rafferty – I read with interest Eli Davies’ contribution to Writing the Troubles, and concur with her argument that the voices of women have been marginalised within the historical narrative of the conflict. Indeed, Eilish Rooney’s assessment of the situation is unambiguous: ‘If you want to learn about women in the Northern Irish conflict, you...