Phone: +44(0) 28 9097 3413
E-mail: f.teeney@qub.ac.uk
Office: Room 19.0G.004, 19 University Square

Francis Teeney is a psychologist employed as a Research Fellow on the Leverhulme funded Project Compromise after Conflict and employed at the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice. His responsibilities include overseeing the Northern Ireland aspects of data collection; message dissemination through advanced social media techniques and interviewing VIP interviewees (given his high profile role within this group). He is interested in the role of emotions and how they affect victim’s health and the responses to political initiatives; he extensively researches many aspects of the Northern Ireland conflict and was involved in many behind the scenes initiatives to facilitate dialogue within the peace process. Together with his friend and colleague, Professor John Brewer, he carried out an extensive programme of research into the role of the Northern Ireland churches in the peace process – uncovering explosive data about the secret dialogue that had been taking place over 30 years to try to bring about peace. He was also the manager of HUMAINE a 43 University wide research project on emotions funded by the EU. He has given many workshops for those affected by the political conflict and gave annual seminars to the officers of the Armed Forces at St Andrews. His PhD was "The Transformation of Sinn Fein and the Progressive Unionist Party into Constitutional Politics: A Social Movement Analysis".

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Research Interests

Francis has wide variety of research interests that straddle both sociology and psychology including Northern Ireland politics; the role of emotions in health; is the Managing Director of Mickel Health Initiatives – a treatment for people with M.E./ Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Along with Professor Roddy Cowie and Professor John Brewer he is interested in Religion as a social force and how it affects peoples, health, political behaviour and well-being.

Publications

• Report on Gender Issues (Brussels:  European Commission, WPO, Humaine Portal, 14 February 2005), 10pp.

• Report on IPR (Brussels:  European Commission, WPO, Humaine Portal, 14 February 2005), 20pp.

• Book review, Irish Journal of Sociology. Volume 10, No. 2, 2001. “Keeping the Peace? Politics, Television News and the Northern Ireland Peace Process” by Graham Spencer.

• ‘Religion and peacemaking: a conceptualization’, Sociology 44(6) 2010, pp. 1019-37 (co-authored with John Brewer and Gareth Higgins). Shortlisted for the 2010 SAGE prize for innovation and excellence.

• Religion, Civil Society and Peace in Northern Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, xix+249 (with John Brewer and Gareth Higgins).

• ‘Religion, violence, tolerance and peace in Northern Ireland’, in S. Brunn (ed.), The Changing World Religion Map. New York: Springer, forthcoming 2013 (with John Brewer).