Doctoral Dissertation Research: Beyond Sectarianism? Violence After Peace Accords in Belfast, Northern Ireland

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Under the supervision of Dr. Jane Schneider, graduate student Molly Hurley Dupret will examine the possibility that even after the landmark 1998 Good Friday peace agreement, old communal divisions in Belfast, Northern Ireland, will continue and new ones may emerge. The research will focus on Belfast's interfaces, boundaries that demarcate territory. These dividing lines may be physical markers, such as the infamous Peace Line that separates Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods in west Belfast, but they can also be more subtlet, invisible boundaries that are learned through one's own navigations or the stories of friends, relatives and the media. The researcher will interview professional and non-professional boundary navigators, including police officers, taxi drivers, and residents of one neighborhood that has no built interfaces but nevertheless has numerous invisible dividing lines. The interview data will be used to delineat divisions and to understand their effects on people's daily lives, particularly the routes that they feel safe traveling. In addition to interviewing these navigators, the researcher will also gather their hand-drawn mental or cognitive maps, a useful technique of cognitive spatial research; and will use these maps to engage respondents in disucssion of routes they commonly do or do not follow. It is anticipated that this project will not only contribute to academic debates about mental maps and cognitive theory, but will also have significant implications for Belfast policy discussions regarding interfaces, discussions that, until recently, solely focused on the built interface walls and largely ignored less obvious boundaries. Finally, this project has the potential to shed light on post-peace agreement in other contexts where division continues despite the cessation of warfare.