By Luke Bradley - Recently, I saw the movie everybody’s talking about: Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast. As somebody born two years after the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement, I am a part of the generation for whom, thankfully, cinema is the closest they will get to visualizing the ‘Troubles’. Of course, like any piece of historical fiction,... Continue Reading →
By Megan Henvey The early medieval high crosses of Ireland may seem an unusual topic for a blog about the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, but exploration of their scholarly and civic treatment highlights the wide-ranging impact of the conflict and the religio-political divisions in the region, as well as indicating how far we’ve come, and... Continue Reading →
By Rory Allen- Memoirs and autobiographies have enormous potential to contribute to the wider understanding of the ‘Troubles’. In capturing the narratives of those who were involved in or lived through the Northern Ireland conflict, we gain an insight into the real, lived experience of Ulster’s contested past. While Irish nationalists and republicans have long... Continue Reading →
By Matthew Gault On 30 August, public and digital anthropologist Kate Ellenberger began a discussion on Twitter about using images of the deceased, in particular of their bodies, without the consent of family members. She also reflected on the impact these images can have on readers. In Northern Ireland we frequently see images of the... Continue Reading →
By Eileen Harrisson - I grew up by Bangor, Co Down and, after obtaining a Joint Honours BA in Italian and Art from Aberystwyth University in June 1975, I returned to Northern Ireland. The severity of the illness that had led to my father being invalided out of the RAF during World War II was... Continue Reading →
By Cillian McGrattan- Following the extraordinary scenes at the funeral of the senior republican Bobby Storey at the end of June 2020, commentators, north and south of the border, offered numerous explanations. My intention here is not so much to compliment nor to critique those framings. Instead, I wish to offer a preliminary reading on... Continue Reading →
By Laney Lenox- From September-December 2017, I lived in the Beechmount area of the Falls in West Belfast. Although I had spent an extensive amount of time living in Belfast prior to this, both as an undergraduate and a postgraduate studying post-conflict society, like many international transplants to Belfast I lived in South Belfast near... Continue Reading →
By Gareth Mulvenna- secret history a version of historical events which differs from the official or commonly accepted record and purports to be the true version – Collins English Dictionary This is not intended to be a comprehensive review of the recent Spotlight series. I don’t think it is possible to fairly appraise the full... Continue Reading →
By Rachel Sayers- When you think of Northern Ireland’s ‘Troubles’, clothes shopping is not something you would generally consider in the narrative of the conflict. Indeed, you could say that concentrating on such matters is frivolous when compared to the lives lost and irreversible damage wrought by thirty years of inter-communal conflict. However, I argue... Continue Reading →
By Kevin Hearty- If we are prepared to tell our own story then we must be prepared to let others do the same... Some months ago a former member of the security forces accosted me over my monograph Critical Engagement: Irish Republicanism, Memory Politics and Policing. I was accused of peddling ‘untruths’, trying to ‘rewrite... Continue Reading →
Writing the 'Troubles' 