Programme Description
The nature of the programme
Stress and compromise are general features of social life. However, they are thrown into particularly vivid relief in post-conflict societies, where the processes and resources that underpin compromise operate in extremis. It is when feelings of compromise are most difficult to garner and sustain, when stress is at its height, that we get a better handle on how compromise works. Our research programme addresses the processes and resources that develop and sustain feelings of compromise amongst victims of communal conflict, and involves a series of related projects that will collect cross-national, multi-method data, covering contemporary and historical conflicts. Our research design entails empirical investigation of what is a slippery concept in order to get a firm hold over its meaning and practice.
Research questions
Compromise is a little understood process. It is sometimes confused with tolerance, a term currently in vogue. The paradox of tolerance, however, is that where it exists already, compromise is redundant; where it does not, it is the outcome of compromise not its cause. Tolerance is not a component of compromise but its consequence. More commonly, people in Western societies speak of the ‘spirit of compromise’. We seek to understand what is meant by this. Our starting point is that compromise constitutes a set of emotions, behaviours and relationships.
Compromise is thought of as an emotion – which is why lay people talk of ‘feelings of compromise’ – but there is no sense of what emotions it encompasses. Yet it cannot be understood solely as a set of feelings, for emotions are enacted in behaviour. When emotions become behaviours they transform into the standardized actions and forms of language that are culturally recognized as the appropriate ways for acting and talking emotionally. This does not deny that the emotional feeling is ‘real’ (or felt to be real); it means that when acting what are (or what we believe are) raw emotions we use standardized rituals that distance our behaviour from the emotional feeling. The debate within the sociology of emotions about whether emotions are corporeal or discursive is thus irrelevant, for either way emotions are performative. Emotions are artful in two senses, in that the feelings are constructed in their performance and this performance can be uncoupled from what is being felt. The latter may occur because we may either lack any of the feelings associated with the ritualized behaviour we are enacting and talking (we are pretending an emotion) or we are performing behaviours and talking entirely contrary to how we feel (we are disguising an emotion).
It is thus necessary to distinguish analytically between the affective and behavioural dimensions of compromise. We know very little about each. If we unpack feelings of compromise, what sets of emotions are embedded therein? What are the behaviours and symbolic rituals which people associate with compromise? This distinction raises a further intriguing question: do the feelings and behaviours associated with it have to correspond? This opens up the possibility that compromise does not require people to stop feeling negative emotions; it entails agreement to distance ourselves from how we feel and to perform the ritualized behaviours and talk by which compromise is enacted.
There is another sense in which compromise is more than a set of feelings. Compromise describes a particular type of relationship based on reciprocity, involving mutual concessions to act toward each another in the future in agreed ways. This, too, raises further analytical questions. There are two in particular. First, are the future behaviours which compromise implicates inherently reciprocal or can compromise exist one-sidedly? Answers to this query are important, for it raises issues about the conditions which sustain compromise. If compromise can be uncoupled from reciprocity, it suggests that one party can maintain commitment to their obligations independently of the other party and that compromise can continue under circumstances of abrogation. It is thus worth examining the conditions, if any, under which compromise agreements are sustained by one party to a reciprocal relationship when the other defaults.
The second set of questions generated by reciprocity concern the nature of the parties to the relationship. Is compromise a collective phenomenon and can its obligations be met by others on our behalf? To consider it so implies that the feelings and behaviours it implicates adhere to groups as well as individuals, that group relations can be managed in ways that garner the processes and resources that sustain compromise, and that third-party compromise is feasible. The third party here can be another individual who agrees to compromise on another’s behalf, as well as political leaders, whole cultural groups or what sociologists call the ‘generalized other’. It seems worth knowing whether compromise loses some of its qualities when it is disconnected from reciprocal inter-personal relationships. If compromise is a collective process, then group dynamics affect it. How should individual group members respond when they do not consider that the third party speaks on their behalf or they disagree with the concessions; and do groups still have obligations to move onward toward compromise when some of their members cannot muster the appropriate feelings or perform the relevant behaviours? Consideration of the nature and quality of third-hand compromise thus generates a raft of issues that get to the heart of the process.
Studying compromise
We intend to deconstruct the emotions and behaviours embedded in compromise and to locate them within a repertoire of affective-relational responses to stress. These are hope-anticipation, forgiveness-redemption and memory-remembrance. We start from the hypothesis that compromise amongst victims-perpetrators involves hope-anticipation of the future, forgiveness-redemption for perpetrators and forms of memory-remembrance of the conflict that transcend divided memories. This repertoire of stress responses is at one and the same time the process by which compromise works and the resources for garnering and sustaining it. The research programme is intended to test this view by empirical research with victims and the general public in three contemporary conflicts, South Africa, Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka, using surveys and qualitative interviews, as well as in several historical case studies.
These stress responses are normally discussed using theological discourse and exist within a religious eschatology, most notably the Christianization of the truth recovery process in South Africa through Archbishop Tutu’s leadership of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This is not helpful to victims with no belief or in communal conflicts where religion is perceived to be part of the problem, such as in Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka. Locating compromise in this repertoire of stress responses places it within a secular eschatology that allows compromise to be forward-looking and progressive without recourse to religion. A further virtue of comparing these two societies is that their peace process is fragile and vulnerable to outbreaks of renewed violence, thus research on compromise gives special impetus to helping secure the peace.
The research programme is designed to tease out the features of compromise discussed above: whether it is possible to uncouple feelings and behaviours, allowing compromise to be practised irrespective of victims’ emotional feelings; whether compromise can be meaningful to victims on a non-reciprocal basis, or even when abrogated by one party; what the grounds are for considering compromise a group process; and the potential for, and quality of, third-party compromise. This will be accomplished in a series of linked projects, as follows:
Victims and compromise in Northern Ireland (2009-13)
To be undertaken by Brewer and Hayes, with one 4-year RF post (Teeney) and one 4-year RA post (Dudgeon). This project is in three parts, to be done in sequence. The first involves use of a professional survey unit to administer a survey among 500 victims accessed through appropriately sampled victim support groups. This is intended as a scoping exercise to collect descriptive information on victim experiences, to explore how victims understand compromise in terms of the research questions above and how it intersects in their repertoire of stress responses with hope, forgiveness and memory. The second part involves qualitative interviews with 75 victims, appropriately sampled, to address more sensitive issues in depth, to be undertaken chiefly by the RF and RA. The third is a sample survey of the general population in Northern Ireland (about 1,500 people) on issues of compromise, forgiveness and victimhood. Dr Yvonne McGivern will act as Consultant on Part 3 and be our local agent with the Northern Irish-based survey unit.
Victim support groups and the needs of victims in Northern Ireland (2010-13)
To be undertaken by a PhD candidate funded by a 3-year studentship (Fowler). The politicization of victimhood in Northern Ireland’s peace process makes it a contested status and some support groups have appropriated highly political roles. The project will thus involve qualitative interviews with activists/leaders in victim support groups to establish how they perceive their role in assisting members in developing and sustaining compromise. The perspective of victim support groups will be balanced by allowing exclusive access to qualitative interview data collected as part of the above project, which addresses the victims’ perspectives on the role and functions of support groups.
Victims and compromise in Sri Lanka (2011-14)
This is designed to replicate parts 1 and 2 of the Northern Ireland study using the same methodological approaches. This work will be franchised to the Asian Institute of Missiology in Colombo, a research collaborator of Brewer. This project facilitates cross-national comparisons on the key intellectual concerns of the programme, although the Institute will also use this data to assist in developing workshop programmes in Sri Lanka on the ‘spirituality of healing’, under the direction of Professor Lal Wijesinghe, University of Kelaniya in Colombo, with whom Brewer has worked in the past. The RA on the Northern Ireland project will be used to input and code the data.
Compromise in South Africa (2010-13)
To be undertaken by a quantitatively trained 3-year PDF (Mueller-Hirth). This case study has been selected for two reasons. There is a substantial body of survey research on reconciliation in South Africa (lodged at the University of Michigan) that permits comparisons with Part 3 of the Northern Ireland project; and the passage of time since South Africa’s settlement allows issues of victimhood and compromise to be set in a slightly longer time frame. Secondary data analysis of existing surveys will be complemented by literature review of qualitative studies amongst victims and new qualitative interviews with victims in the Cape Town area. Brewer has a good working relationship with Professor Clifford Shearing, at the University of Cape Town, who is an international expert on transitional justice with victims in peace processes and will assist as Consultant in two periods of fieldwork.
Victimhood, truth recovery and the development of compromise (2010-12)
To be undertaken by a 2-year PDF (Caumartin). Truth commissions are a popular device for managing victimhood and have been introduced as part of most peace processes, permitting cross-national comparisons over an extended time period. Commission reports are accessible online and in hard copy and they offer the opportunity to explore the impact of truth recovery processes on victims’ development and practise of compromise. The verbatim evidence by witnesses also constitutes a relatively untapped resource for understanding their notions of compromise and its connection to justice and other stress responses. It is possible to assess the longer-term effect of truth recovery on sustaining victims’ commitment to compromise, forgiveness and hope by exploring secondary literature, newspapers and other documentary sources for cases where witnesses have reflected back on the process of truth recovery and assessed its value for their feelings of compromise.
Historical case studies of compromise over time (2009-13)
Three PhD candidates funded by 3-year studentships to explore historical case studies for the intersection of victimhood, memory, hope and forgiveness by means of secondary analysis of the extant literature. The case studies are recovered memory in Spain after the fall of Franco ClaireMagill), the social reintegration of former child soldiers in Sierra Leone (Rachel Anderson) and the role of religion in recovery from trauma after masscares in Colombia (Sandra Rios).
Historical case studies are important for introducing a longer time frame – different in each case – enabling us to explore how compromise emerged and developed with the passage of time. Time itself is the independent variable – since it is prosaic that victims are told that time heals. We wish to establish whether with time, policies and procedures were developed for managing the resources that garner and sustain compromise within the repertoire of stress responses by which we understand compromise. Candidates will be appointed with appropriate expertise in each country and with relevant language and disciplinary skills in order to utilize otherwise inaccessible archive sources. This will involve periods of fieldwork abroad to consult documents and archives.
The research methods to be used
We will collect primary data by means of sample surveys of victims in two countries, contrast general population survey data in two, and conduct qualitative interviews with victims in three. We will also undertake secondary analysis of existing survey data in another. Our research programme allows us to focus on contemporary and historical cases, using a variety of data sources. Documentary and archive analysis will be deployed in four related historical case studies in order to access own-language sources, and the link between compromise and truth recovery is explored with documentary analysis of multiple cases. Literature reviews will also be used to map the field and engage with specific case studies.
General brief summaries of the qualifications of the researchers
Brewer (MRIA, FRSE, AcSS, FRSA) Held visiting appointments at Yale University, St John’s College Oxford, Corpus Christi College Cambridge and the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. President of the British Sociological Association. Former Leverhulme Research Fellow, former Chair of the BSA and former member of the ESRC Training and Development Board. Currently member of the ESRC Virtual Research College and member of the Governing Council of the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences. Brewer has earned c£4.5million in research grants, has fourteen books and over 100 peer reviewed articles and contributions. He specializes in qualitative research.
Hayes (AcSS) Held visiting appointments in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, University of Cologne, The Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin and the Institute of Governance, Queen’s University of Belfast. She is a former member of the ESRC Research Board and is a member of the International Assessment Panel of the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences. Hayes has earned over £450,000 in research grants, funded from a variety of sources, including the ESRC and the European Commission.
Teeney Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology University of Aberdeen and Honorary Lecturer in Psychology at Queen’s University of Belfast. Teeney has worked with Brewer on an ESRC-funded qualitative project. His PhD (Queen’s, 2004), supervised by Brewer, was on aspects of the Northern Irish peace process. He has also been project manager on a 34-university, EU-funded HUMAINE project on human emotions.
The anticipated form of dissemination
Academic outputs – books, edited collections, articles, chapter contributions – will be complemented by public engagement. We envisage the latter being achieved through more popular forms of writing and a series of workshop programmes. The primary strategy, however, is to mount a radio and/or television series on compromise. We intend to employ Dr Gareth Higgins as a Media Consultant to assist us in liaising with producers to promote the idea of audio and television programmes on aspects of compromise across our various case studies. Higgins is a well-known media presenter in the US (where he spends some of his time) and Northern Ireland. Finally, all survey data will be archived for public access.
Information on any relevant research currently underway
Brewer and Hayes are long-standing colleagues, co-teaching methodology courses and publishing together. Their interests meet in the areas of religion, peace and the Northern Ireland conflict, and their research expertise is complementary.
During his period as Leverhulme Research Fellow, Brewer wrote up previous research on the sociology of peace processes as a book with Polity Press (2010), and with Teeney is coming to the end of an ESRC-funded project on the role of the churches in Northern Ireland’s peace process. Brewer has written on grassroots Christian peacemaking in Northern Ireland, on the sociology of hope and forgiveness, on memory, truth recovery and peace and on the management of emotions after conflict. He publishes on South Africa and Sri Lanka. Hayes is one of Britain’s leading quantitative specialists. She specializes in the design and secondary analysis of large survey data sets and has been the principal investigator on a number of funded survey projects, such as a series of election studies in Northern Ireland as well as the European Values Study in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Her most recent publications include: Conflict and Consensus: A Study of Values and Attitudes in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland (Brill, 2006, co-authored with Tony Fahey and Richard Sinnott).
The nature of the programme
Stress and compromise are general features of social life. However, they are thrown into particularly vivid relief in post-conflict societies, where the processes and resources that underpin compromise operate in extremis. It is when feelings of compromise are most difficult to garner and sustain, when stress is at its height, that we get a better handle on how compromise works. Our research programme addresses the processes and resources that develop and sustain feelings of compromise amongst victims of communal conflict, and involves a series of related projects that will collect cross-national, multi-method data, covering contemporary and historical conflicts. Our research design entails empirical investigation of what is a slippery concept in order to get a firm hold over its meaning and practice.
Research questions
Compromise is a little understood process. It is sometimes confused with tolerance, a term currently in vogue. The paradox of tolerance, however, is that where it exists already, compromise is redundant; where it does not, it is the outcome of compromise not its cause. Tolerance is not a component of compromise but its consequence. More commonly, people in Western societies speak of the ‘spirit of compromise’. We seek to understand what is meant by this. Our starting point is that compromise constitutes a set of emotions, behaviours and relationships.
Compromise is thought of as an emotion – which is why lay people talk of ‘feelings of compromise’ – but there is no sense of what emotions it encompasses. Yet it cannot be understood solely as a set of feelings, for emotions are enacted in behaviour. When emotions become behaviours they transform into the standardized actions and forms of language that are culturally recognized as the appropriate ways for acting and talking emotionally. This does not deny that the emotional feeling is ‘real’ (or felt to be real); it means that when acting what are (or what we believe are) raw emotions we use standardized rituals that distance our behaviour from the emotional feeling. The debate within the sociology of emotions about whether emotions are corporeal or discursive is thus irrelevant, for either way emotions are performative. Emotions are artful in two senses, in that the feelings are constructed in their performance and this performance can be uncoupled from what is being felt. The latter may occur because we may either lack any of the feelings associated with the ritualized behaviour we are enacting and talking (we are pretending an emotion) or we are performing behaviours and talking entirely contrary to how we feel (we are disguising an emotion).
It is thus necessary to distinguish analytically between the affective and behavioural dimensions of compromise. We know very little about each. If we unpack feelings of compromise, what sets of emotions are embedded therein? What are the behaviours and symbolic rituals which people associate with compromise? This distinction raises a further intriguing question: do the feelings and behaviours associated with it have to correspond? This opens up the possibility that compromise does not require people to stop feeling negative emotions; it entails agreement to distance ourselves from how we feel and to perform the ritualized behaviours and talk by which compromise is enacted.
There is another sense in which compromise is more than a set of feelings. Compromise describes a particular type of relationship based on reciprocity, involving mutual concessions to act toward each another in the future in agreed ways. This, too, raises further analytical questions. There are two in particular. First, are the future behaviours which compromise implicates inherently reciprocal or can compromise exist one-sidedly? Answers to this query are important, for it raises issues about the conditions which sustain compromise. If compromise can be uncoupled from reciprocity, it suggests that one party can maintain commitment to their obligations independently of the other party and that compromise can continue under circumstances of abrogation. It is thus worth examining the conditions, if any, under which compromise agreements are sustained by one party to a reciprocal relationship when the other defaults.
The second set of questions generated by reciprocity concern the nature of the parties to the relationship. Is compromise a collective phenomenon and can its obligations be met by others on our behalf? To consider it so implies that the feelings and behaviours it implicates adhere to groups as well as individuals, that group relations can be managed in ways that garner the processes and resources that sustain compromise, and that third-party compromise is feasible. The third party here can be another individual who agrees to compromise on another’s behalf, as well as political leaders, whole cultural groups or what sociologists call the ‘generalized other’. It seems worth knowing whether compromise loses some of its qualities when it is disconnected from reciprocal inter-personal relationships. If compromise is a collective process, then group dynamics affect it. How should individual group members respond when they do not consider that the third party speaks on their behalf or they disagree with the concessions; and do groups still have obligations to move onward toward compromise when some of their members cannot muster the appropriate feelings or perform the relevant behaviours? Consideration of the nature and quality of third-hand compromise thus generates a raft of issues that get to the heart of the process.
Studying compromise
We intend to deconstruct the emotions and behaviours embedded in compromise and to locate them within a repertoire of affective-relational responses to stress. These are hope-anticipation, forgiveness-redemption and memory-remembrance. We start from the hypothesis that compromise amongst victims-perpetrators involves hope-anticipation of the future, forgiveness-redemption for perpetrators and forms of memory-remembrance of the conflict that transcend divided memories. This repertoire of stress responses is at one and the same time the process by which compromise works and the resources for garnering and sustaining it. The research programme is intended to test this view by empirical research with victims and the general public in three contemporary conflicts, South Africa, Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka, using surveys and qualitative interviews, as well as in several historical case studies.
These stress responses are normally discussed using theological discourse and exist within a religious eschatology, most notably the Christianization of the truth recovery process in South Africa through Archbishop Tutu’s leadership of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This is not helpful to victims with no belief or in communal conflicts where religion is perceived to be part of the problem, such as in Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka. Locating compromise in this repertoire of stress responses places it within a secular eschatology that allows compromise to be forward-looking and progressive without recourse to religion. A further virtue of comparing these two societies is that their peace process is fragile and vulnerable to outbreaks of renewed violence, thus research on compromise gives special impetus to helping secure the peace.
The research programme is designed to tease out the features of compromise discussed above: whether it is possible to uncouple feelings and behaviours, allowing compromise to be practised irrespective of victims’ emotional feelings; whether compromise can be meaningful to victims on a non-reciprocal basis, or even when abrogated by one party; what the grounds are for considering compromise a group process; and the potential for, and quality of, third-party compromise. This will be accomplished in a series of linked projects, as follows:
Victims and compromise in Northern Ireland (2009-13)
To be undertaken by Brewer and Hayes, with one 4-year RF post (Teeney) and one 4-year RA post (Dudgeon). This project is in three parts, to be done in sequence. The first involves use of a professional survey unit to administer a survey among 500 victims accessed through appropriately sampled victim support groups. This is intended as a scoping exercise to collect descriptive information on victim experiences, to explore how victims understand compromise in terms of the research questions above and how it intersects in their repertoire of stress responses with hope, forgiveness and memory. The second part involves qualitative interviews with 75 victims, appropriately sampled, to address more sensitive issues in depth, to be undertaken chiefly by the RF and RA. The third is a sample survey of the general population in Northern Ireland (about 1,500 people) on issues of compromise, forgiveness and victimhood. Dr Yvonne McGivern will act as Consultant on Part 3 and be our local agent with the Northern Irish-based survey unit.
Victim support groups and the needs of victims in Northern Ireland (2010-13)
To be undertaken by a PhD candidate funded by a 3-year studentship (Fowler). The politicization of victimhood in Northern Ireland’s peace process makes it a contested status and some support groups have appropriated highly political roles. The project will thus involve qualitative interviews with activists/leaders in victim support groups to establish how they perceive their role in assisting members in developing and sustaining compromise. The perspective of victim support groups will be balanced by allowing exclusive access to qualitative interview data collected as part of the above project, which addresses the victims’ perspectives on the role and functions of support groups.
Victims and compromise in Sri Lanka (2011-14)
This is designed to replicate parts 1 and 2 of the Northern Ireland study using the same methodological approaches. This work will be franchised to the Asian Institute of Missiology in Colombo, a research collaborator of Brewer. This project facilitates cross-national comparisons on the key intellectual concerns of the programme, although the Institute will also use this data to assist in developing workshop programmes in Sri Lanka on the ‘spirituality of healing’, under the direction of Professor Lal Wijesinghe, University of Kelaniya in Colombo, with whom Brewer has worked in the past. The RA on the Northern Ireland project will be used to input and code the data.
Compromise in South Africa (2010-13)
To be undertaken by a quantitatively trained 3-year PDF (Mueller-Hirth). This case study has been selected for two reasons. There is a substantial body of survey research on reconciliation in South Africa (lodged at the University of Michigan) that permits comparisons with Part 3 of the Northern Ireland project; and the passage of time since South Africa’s settlement allows issues of victimhood and compromise to be set in a slightly longer time frame. Secondary data analysis of existing surveys will be complemented by literature review of qualitative studies amongst victims and new qualitative interviews with victims in the Cape Town area. Brewer has a good working relationship with Professor Clifford Shearing, at the University of Cape Town, who is an international expert on transitional justice with victims in peace processes and will assist as Consultant in two periods of fieldwork.
Victimhood, truth recovery and the development of compromise (2010-12)
To be undertaken by a 2-year PDF (Caumartin). Truth commissions are a popular device for managing victimhood and have been introduced as part of most peace processes, permitting cross-national comparisons over an extended time period. Commission reports are accessible online and in hard copy and they offer the opportunity to explore the impact of truth recovery processes on victims’ development and practise of compromise. The verbatim evidence by witnesses also constitutes a relatively untapped resource for understanding their notions of compromise and its connection to justice and other stress responses. It is possible to assess the longer-term effect of truth recovery on sustaining victims’ commitment to compromise, forgiveness and hope by exploring secondary literature, newspapers and other documentary sources for cases where witnesses have reflected back on the process of truth recovery and assessed its value for their feelings of compromise.
Historical case studies of compromise over time (2009-13)
Three PhD candidates funded by 3-year studentships to explore historical case studies for the intersection of victimhood, memory, hope and forgiveness by means of secondary analysis of the extant literature. The case studies are recovered memory in Spain after the fall of Franco ClaireMagill), the social reintegration of former child soldiers in Sierra Leone (Rachel Anderson) and the role of religion in recovery from trauma after masscares in Colombia (Sandra Rios).
Historical case studies are important for introducing a longer time frame – different in each case – enabling us to explore how compromise emerged and developed with the passage of time. Time itself is the independent variable – since it is prosaic that victims are told that time heals. We wish to establish whether with time, policies and procedures were developed for managing the resources that garner and sustain compromise within the repertoire of stress responses by which we understand compromise. Candidates will be appointed with appropriate expertise in each country and with relevant language and disciplinary skills in order to utilize otherwise inaccessible archive sources. This will involve periods of fieldwork abroad to consult documents and archives.
The research methods to be used
We will collect primary data by means of sample surveys of victims in two countries, contrast general population survey data in two, and conduct qualitative interviews with victims in three. We will also undertake secondary analysis of existing survey data in another. Our research programme allows us to focus on contemporary and historical cases, using a variety of data sources. Documentary and archive analysis will be deployed in four related historical case studies in order to access own-language sources, and the link between compromise and truth recovery is explored with documentary analysis of multiple cases. Literature reviews will also be used to map the field and engage with specific case studies.
General brief summaries of the qualifications of the researchers
Brewer (MRIA, FRSE, AcSS, FRSA) Held visiting appointments at Yale University, St John’s College Oxford, Corpus Christi College Cambridge and the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. President of the British Sociological Association. Former Leverhulme Research Fellow, former Chair of the BSA and former member of the ESRC Training and Development Board. Currently member of the ESRC Virtual Research College and member of the Governing Council of the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences. Brewer has earned c£4.5million in research grants, has fourteen books and over 100 peer reviewed articles and contributions. He specializes in qualitative research.
Hayes (AcSS) Held visiting appointments in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, University of Cologne, The Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin and the Institute of Governance, Queen’s University of Belfast. She is a former member of the ESRC Research Board and is a member of the International Assessment Panel of the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences. Hayes has earned over £450,000 in research grants, funded from a variety of sources, including the ESRC and the European Commission.
Teeney Senior Research Fellow at The Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice (ISCTSJ), Queen's University of Belfast, Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology University of Aberdeen and Honorary Lecturer in Psychology at Queen’s University of Belfast. Teeney has worked with Brewer on an ESRC-funded qualitative project. His PhD (Queen’s, 2004), supervised by Brewer, was on aspects of the Northern Irish peace process. He has also been project manager on a 34-university, EU-funded HUMAINE project on human emotions.
The anticipated form of dissemination
Academic outputs – books, edited collections, articles, chapter contributions – will be complemented by public engagement. We envisage the latter being achieved through more popular forms of writing and a series of workshop programmes. The primary strategy, however, is to mount a radio and/or television series on compromise. We intend to employ Dr Gareth Higgins as a Media Consultant to assist us in liaising with producers to promote the idea of audio and television programmes on aspects of compromise across our various case studies. Higgins is a well-known media presenter in the US (where he spends some of his time) and Northern Ireland. Finally, all survey data will be archived for public access.
Information on any relevant research currently underway
Brewer and Hayes are long-standing colleagues, co-teaching methodology courses and publishing together. Their interests meet in the areas of religion, peace and the Northern Ireland conflict, and their research expertise is complementary.
During his period as Leverhulme Research Fellow, Brewer wrote up previous research on the sociology of peace processes as a book with Polity Press (2010), and with Teeney is coming to the end of an ESRC-funded project on the role of the churches in Northern Ireland’s peace process. Brewer has written on grassroots Christian peacemaking in Northern Ireland, on the sociology of hope and forgiveness, on memory, truth recovery and peace and on the management of emotions after conflict. He publishes on South Africa and Sri Lanka. Hayes is one of Britain’s leading quantitative specialists. She specializes in the design and secondary analysis of large survey data sets and has been the principal investigator on a number of funded survey projects, such as a series of election studies in Northern Ireland as well as the European Values Study in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Her most recent publications include: Conflict and Consensus: A Study of Values and Attitudes in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland (Brill, 2006, co-authored with Tony Fahey and Richard Sinnott).
