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Blackbourn

Jessie Blackbourn PhD Student (BA, MA Queen’s University Belfast)
jblackbourn01@qub.ac.uk

Supervisors: Professor Richard English; Dr Margaret O’Callaghan

Thesis

The Northern Ireland Peace Process and the Post-9/11 Terrorism Crisis

My thesis aims to address the particular context of the international terrorism crisis brought on by the terrorist attacks on the USA on 11th September 2001 by examining the British government’s response to international terrorism and the legislation that it created to deal with this new phenomenon. This will be examined in contrast to the legislation the government introduced that was aimed at distancing Northern Ireland from the emergency and temporary terrorism legislation of its past and into its new normalised status. In particular this thesis will examine the effect of terrorism legislation on civil liberties to understand the context under which terrorism legislation in one part of the state (Northern Ireland) is being reversed and civil liberties are being restored, while in the UK as a whole civil liberties are being suppressed by new terrorism legislation. Although the aim is not to simply draw comparisons to determine a set of ‘lessons’ that the government has or has not learnt about the effects of the subjugation of civil liberties from terrorism legislation in Northern Ireland, this will form a part of the thesis. More importantly the thesis seeks to examine the sometimes seemingly contradictory way in which the British government legislates for international terrorism and terrorism in Northern Ireland.

Areas of Research

My primary research interests include: terrorism and government counter terrorism policy; the politics of Northern Ireland, in particular the Northern Irish peace process in a comparative perspective; and contemporary British and Irish politics.