& Welcome to C-STAR

C-STAR focuses on the politics and economics of population. It combines quantitative spatial analysis with qualitative research on territoriality.

C-STAR is a research centre approved by Academic Council and based in the School of Geography of Queen's University Belfast. It was established in 2000, building on earlier joint work on the spatial analysis of labour markets, migration, demography and state borders. It brings together qualitative data collection and interpretation with expertise in statistical techniques and Geographical Information Systems (GIS), its methods ranging from in-depth interviewing and media analysis to geographically-weighted regression.

The research focus comprises four interwoven strands:

• Population censuses, their analysis and political implications
• Ethno-national conflict, territoriality and population segregation
• Labour markets, employment patterns and international migration
• State territoriality, borders and cross-border processes

C-STAR has a record of empirical research supported by funding agencies; contract work for official bodies; and non-funded theoretical enquiry. It works with other researchers in Queens - most notably through active participation in the University's interdisciplinary Centre for International Borders Research (CIBR: www.qub.ac.uk/cibr); and with other researchers in the Irish Republic, Britain and further afield.

Members of C-STAR are current or recent grant-holders on three ESRC-funded projects (two on the Northern Ireland Census; and one based in Cambridge on conflict in 'divided cities'); and an EU-funded joint project (involving University College Dublin, and the Institute of Governance and CIBR in Queen's) researching Ireland's border regions and cross-border developments. C-STAR is hosting a Marie Curie Fellowship for a comparative study of EU borders in Hungary and Ireland; and members are also working on urban segregation, and on the political economy of cross-border labour migration.

 © C-STAR 2005