In recent weeks, community division and violence have re-erupted in Belfast and across Northern Ireland.* These flareups are a result of several factors including legacies of conflict, rising tensions over post-Brexit trade rules, and worsening relations between the parties in the power-sharing Belfast government. Loyalist paramilitary groups have even announced to the British and Irish governments they are withdrawing support for the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement in protest of Northern Ireland’s Irish Sea trade border with the rest of the UK.
Join the Mershon Center and Moritz College of Law's Divided Community Project for a lunchtime conversation with Dr. Duncan Morrow as he analyzes the convergence of dynamics generating turbulence on the island. He will also share his perspective on constructive ways forward, and how lessons learned in Northern Ireland might be relevant here in the United States.
*References to recent news articles regarding Northern Ireland riots: BBC, Belfast Telegraph, The Guardian.
If you require an accommodation such as live captioning or interpretation to participate in this event, please contact Kyle McCray, mccray.44@osu.edu. Requests made two weeks before the event will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.
Speaker
Duncan Morrow is Professor in Politics and Director of Community Engagement at Ulster University in Belfast. He has worked directly in the fields of conflict resolution, Northern Ireland politics and the relationship between religion and politics including a strong interest in prisons, the pathology of violence, policing and criminal justice. His current research interests include inter-group peace and conflict, religion and violence Northern Ireland Politics and the work of Rene Girard.
Between 2002 and 2012, Duncan was Chief Executive of the NI Community Relations Council. In 1998 he was appointed as a Sentence Review Commissioner responsible for implementing the early release provisions of the Good Friday Agreement, and since 2002 he has been a Ni Parole Commissioner. Between 2012-15 he was chair of the Independent Advisory Group on Tackling Sectarianism which advised the Scottish Government. In 2015-16 he also chaired the Scottish Independent Advisory Group on Hate Crime, Prejudice and Community Cohesion. Since 2018 he has been actively engaged in political and community efforts to Northern Ireland society away from sectarian division and paramilitarism.
Event Host
This event is co-hosted between the the Recovering from Violence research cluster and the Moritz College of Law's Divided Community Project.
