During his tenure, Michael will be working with Dr Ronit-Berger Hobson, Mitchell Institute Fellow: The Politics and Security of Institutional Peacebuilding, on his book project, currently provisionally titled: Pushing for Peace in Northern Ireland: The United States’ Good Intentions.  The book is based on Michael’s long and personal experience as an interlocutor with key political players among elected officials in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, the UK, and the USA.  The book will be a retrospective review of the US’s involvement in the Northern Ireland Peace Process from 1988 to the present and will be both a record of history and a part-memoire of the scholar’s own involvement in the dynamic process.

The son of a well known journalist, Michael began his journalistic career with The Belfast Telegraph, then the BBC, and then senior roles in The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in Toronto, and for nine years at CBC's Washington DC bureau.  Michael has written for The Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, Wall Street Journal, etc., and been interviewed on ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, NPR, Fox news and current affairs programs.

Michael has held various positions including fellow, senior fellow and lecturer, at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Aspen Institute, Center for Global Development, and most recently at the New America Foundation.

A Belfast native, he has spoken at and convened meetings on the conflict in Northern Ireland, over 40 years, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, New York, Toronto, and Washington, DC, particularly during the lead up to, and negotiations on, The Good Friday Agreement.

He acted as a private liaison particularly for The Alliance Party then-leader, Lord John Alderdice, and also Lord David Trimble, before, during, and after the two Clinton presidencies.  Michael connected with Jonathan Powell when he was a diplomat at the UK Embassy in the USA, and later when Jonathan was a top aide to Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Michael created the concept of a more robust disarmament and decriminalization agency, the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC), which was crucial in restoring peace and devolution in Northern Ireland.  Established in 2004 by the British and Irish governments the IMC aimed to fulfil three responsibilities: to monitor and report on the continuing activities of paramilitary groups; to monitor and report at six-monthly intervals on the security normalisation measures taken by the British Government in Northern Ireland and, to consider and report on claims from any party in the Northern Ireland Assembly that a Minister or another party was not committed to democratic means or was not following the correct standards of behaviour.  The Commission ceased operations in 2011.

A former director of The Ireland Funds, he has been energetic supporter of integrated education.

A teenage and student member of the old Northern Ireland Labour Party and Irish Labour Party, he is a proud social democrat. Michael is an alumnus of Methodist College, Belfast, Trinity College, Dublin, and Harvard University.

Michael has a deep personal archive of Northern Ireland-US private memoranda, correspondence, and detailed notes on his meetings with principals in US administrations and Northern Ireland, Irish Republic, and British players.

A strong supporter of the GFA, he believes it is time for reform of the agreement to produce true power sharing and not a cynical carving up of power in the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly.

He has worked in senior levels at The World Bank, Fogarty International Center of the US National Institutes of Health and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, on global health communication.  He is a longstanding judge of The Alicia Patterson Foundation Journalism Fellowships, and a judge of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism and Book Awards.  He has been a board member of The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, in Charleston, where his late Marine officer son Conor was an alumnus.

Following the tragic death of his son Conor in a preventable training tragedy while he served in the armed forces, Michael discovered that many young men and women were regularly being killed in training fiascos but no-one had seen this was a systemic issue across all the armed services.  Working with two key Senate and House of Representatives committee chairs, hundreds of millions of dollars annually have now been added to create safer training, and Acts of Congress passed, one in Conor's name, which have reduced the death toll in the peacetime military which now far exceeds death in combat.

Michael was awarded the OBE in 2001 for his work in the USA in creating a balanced understanding of the conflict in Northern Ireland.