The Interdisciplinary Research Group on ‘Social Justice and the Divided City: The policy relevance of conflict in Belfast’ is led by Dr Katy Hayward, Senior Lecturer in Sociology & Programme Director for Sociology and Dr Dominic Bryan, Director of  the Institute of Irish Studies.

Description of the Project

In 1973, David Harvey’s Social Justice and the City outlined the potential of urban space both to create new forms of repression and to offer foundations for a fair society. Although not uncontroversial, some of his core points of contention – including the connection between social and spatial systems – have since become embedded in contemporary thought on urbanism.

Within our proposed Interdisciplinary Research Group (IRG) are experts on the social divisions created and exacerbated by violent conflict in urban areas. Our combined research to date has uncovered the acute damage caused, or worsened, by violent conflict to equality and solidarity in the city – especially Belfast city, but also including other comparator case cities such as Jerusalem, Nicosia, Mostar, Ramallah, Berlin, and Sofia.

This IRG will offer a unique opportunity to go several steps further: to build on these findings to explore what works and why when it comes to realising social justice in a divided city. We define social justice broadly – as the process through which people are empowered to achieve justice and to challenge obstacles to it in their society. In a city, the obstacles and vehicles for justice take on particularly ‘concrete’ form.  This IRG will concentrate on four broad types of division in the urban setting:  spatial, socio-economic, communal and generational.

In the case of Belfast, and through the use of sub-groups that concentrate on each of these four themes, we hope to test and verify effective means of traversing spatial, socio-economic, community and generational divisions within the city.

Our primary purpose, therefore, is to provide a forum for two-way knowledge exchange between QUB researchers and practitioners/policymakers seeking to find the positive potential for social justice in a divided Belfast.

Statement of Aims:

This IRG aims to enhance the public impact of Queen’s interdisciplinary expertise in urban conflict through:

(a) facilitating closer dialogue among researchers of varied disciplines and career stages on this theme,

(b) direct, substantive engagement with key stakeholders in Belfast, and

(c) consolidating links with experts of other divided cities.

Brief Biographies of our Core Team:

Co-Leaders

Dr Katy Hayward is Senior Lecturer in Sociology. Her most recent book, Political Discourse and Conflict Resolution (Routledge, 2012), was co-edited with Catherine O’Donnell. She is a partner on the ‘conflict management’ module of the ESRC Conflict in Cities project.

Dr Dominic Bryan is Director of the Institute of Irish Studies at QUB. His broad research agenda explores rituals, symbols and memory as they influence identity and social space in Ireland.

‘Spatial divisions’ sub-group leaders

Dr Milena Komarova is a research associate for the ‘Conflict in Cities and the Contested State’ ESRC Research Project (www.conflictincities.org). Her research interests include civil society and conflict in Northern Ireland, Balkan nationalism, the public sphere and collective identities, discourse analysis and visual methods.

Professor Frank Gaffikin is Director of the Institute for Spatial Environmental Planning. He is co-author of Planning in Divided Cities (Blackwell, 2011) and principal investigator on the ESRC-funded project ‘Capacity Building for Sustainable Communities in Contested Space’.

‘Socio-economic divisions’ sub-group leaders

Professor Paddy Hillyard is Emeritus Professor of Sociology and a partner on the ESRC Poverty and Social Exclusion project. His main research interest is in social order and control in modern welfare states, focusing on substantive areas, including social harm, political violence, inequality.

Dr Ian Shuttleworth is Senior Lecturer in Human Geography and a board member of the Centre for International Borders Research. He is currently conducting ESRC-funded research on extending the Northern Ireland Longitudinal Survey.

‘Communal divisions’ sub-group leaders

Dr Clifford Stevenson is Senior Lecturer and Director of the Centre for Research on Political Psychology. He has led an IRCHSS-funded investigation of the role of community identity in collective coping among marginalised areas and is currently co-investigator on an ESRC study on the effects of collective identity on wellbeing and resilience.

Dr Cheryl Lawther is Lecturer in Criminology. She previously held a post-doctoral fellowship in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews, funded by EC Directorate-General for Justice, Freedom and Security. Her research interests include unionism, loyalism and processes of truth recovery.

‘Generational divisions’ sub-group leaders

Dr Siobhán McAlister is Lecturer in Criminology and a member of the Childhood, Transition and Social Justice initiative. Her most recent research examines the impacts and legacies of conflict on children and young people living in areas of deprivation in Northern Ireland.

Cathal McManus is a teaching fellow in the School of Education. He is currently working on an OFMDFM-funded project on educational attainment and socio-economic deprivation.