Professor Cathal McCall, Queen's University Belfast, Politics for Pipsqueaks, Borders for Babies

In 2002, Jonathan Safran Foer's debut novel Everything Is Illuminated, set partly in Ukraine, was published to wild critical acclaim. Two decades later, everything is discombobulated. War, the Mediterranean migration crisis, the rise of ‘illiberal democrats’, Brexit, and the COVID-19 pandemic have served to discombobulate politics, borders and identities in Europe.

This lecture is organised around 3 short stories for children - ‘Pipsqueaks for Politics, Babies for Borders’, ‘Green | White | Orange’, and ‘Bartolemeu Mulgrew, Who Knew?’. ‘In conversation’ - through the stories - with these inheritors of the near European future the lecture explores contemporary politics, borders, and identities in a discombobulated European frame.

Professor Cathal McCall is author of Identity in Northern Ireland: Communities, Politics and Change, Macmillan. 2001; The European Union and Peacebuilding: The Cross-Border Dimension, Macmillan, 2014; and Border Ireland: From Partition to Brexit, Routledge, 2021.

Registration required via Eventbrite

Friday 1 December 2023, 5pm, The Canada Room and Council Chamber, Lanyon Building, Queen's University Belfast.

This event is hosted by the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, Queen's University Belfast.

Professor Cathal McCall

Image  'Europe Map (Land) 1' by Louise Hopkins