Current Research Projects in Peace Studies
Scholars in our School's discipline of Peace Studies engage in a number of internationally-renowned research projects. Often, such research projects receive funding from a number of well-respected awards and grants. Explore this page to discover some of our ongoing research projects and the impacts they make in academy and society.
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Explore our current projects by clicking on their name in the drop-down menu.
Current Projects
The Horizon 2020 funded research project PAVE (Preventing and Addressing Violent Extremism through Community Resilience in the Western Balkans and the MENA) aims to tackle the global issue of radicalisation by examining its root causes and driving factors. Based on a comparative assessment of local communities in relation to vulnerability or resilience to violent extremism across seven case study countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Tunisia, Lebanon and Iraq), the 13 international partner institutions are developing policy recommendations and tools to tackle violent extremism in and beyond the country study sample. The TCD team is led by Maja Halilovic Pastuovic.
Funded by the EU under the Horizon 2020 programme this project is led in Trinity by Professor Linda Hogan. It is a consortium of 11 European partners, led by the University of Utrecht. The project combines high quality training in research integrity with innovative modes of engagement in order to bring ethics alive, thereby equipping the next generation of researchers with the capabilities to conduct research in a responsible manner and to address new and unforeseen research challenges.
Linda Hogan is one of a four-person team in this Irish Research Council funded project. The project is funded under the COALESE programme which is focused on Collaborative Alliances for Societal Challenges. Co-led by Professor Andrea Mulligan, Law and Professor Joan Lalor in Nursing & Midwifery and with Professor Des Ryan (Law) the project aims to investigate, for the first time, the operation of the right to conscientious objection in abortion services in Ireland and to develop a coherent framework for situating conscientious objection within a system of access to abortion services in a manner that is proportionate, effective and legally robust.
This is a government-led national brainstorm on research and the role it can play in creating a better future for all. It has provided the public with an opportunity to submit their ideas about research and its importance. Over 18,000 ideas were received from the public and these have been analysed by an Expert Committee led by Professor Linda Hogan. The Creating Our Future Report will be launched in May 2022.
This one-year project aims to interrogate the meaning and mechanisms of reconciliation in relation to Korea, Ireland and other conflict-affected societies, with a specific focus on providing insights for the Korean situation. Reconciliation is widely regarded as the ultimate goal of peacebuilding, involving group identity change and relationships. However, it is a contested term, variously understood in both the academic literature and in different contexts, and interrelated with other concepts and practices such as conflict resolution, peacebuilding, and transitional justice. Nevertheless, the term has a popular currency, and captures what are deeply desired goods in conflict-affected societies: the removal of the causes of conflict, new relationships and identities, and ultimately, sustainable and stable peace. This project proposes to go beyond existing research to examine the meaning and utility of ‘reconciliation’ through the comparison of different contexts.
The main outputs will be a one-day international conference in Dublin in November 2022, accompanied by a field visit to Northern Ireland, and a subsequent publication. This project is funded by the Korea Foundation and delivered by Dr David Mitchell and Dr Dongjin Kim through the Trinity Centre for Post-Conflict Justice, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, in partnership with the Institute of Trans-division and Border Studies, Shinhan University, Seoul.
This project seeks to better understand the humanitarian vulnerabilities of the Palestinian Bedouin at risk of forced displacement in ‘E1’, an area of the West Bank, Palestine allocated for the expansion of Israeli settlements, condemned as a “flagrant violation under international law” in the landmark UN Security Council resolution 2334 (2016).
This 2 year project will involve working closely with the Palestinian Bedouin community in E1 to gather testimonies of everyday life under threat of forcible transfer, with a view to engaging with the ongoing activities of the International Criminal Court on the situation in Palestine. The grant will support desk based research, fieldwork, and community based outreach activities with the Palestinian Bedouin in E1, in addition to two academic conferences and edited book.
Dr Brendan Browne is working alongside the Principal Investigator Dr Alice Panepinto (Queen’s University Belfast), Dr Triestino Mariniello (Liverpool John Moores University), and Dr Munir Nuseibah (Al Quds University)
Women Religious: Witness Seminars focus on witness testimony. Witness testimony has a vital role in contributing to the academic integrity required for a comprehensive understanding of the years of the conflict in and about Northern Ireland. Women's voices have until recently been missing from the discourse, and only recently have community-based projects begun to remedy this via witness and archiving projects within cultural communities.
This project works by convening, filming and archiving witness statements from women of faith, and initially, from female members of Catholic religious orders who lived and worked within and across various contexts in the years of violent conflict and subsequent transition. As such Witness Seminars complement and enrich academic data and archives by drawing on the indispensable knowledge of those who were actively involved with pastoral, community or educational activities within and between communities, often alongside those living in areas affected by violence - personally and structurally.
The research project is led by Dr Dianne Kirby (Dept of History, Ulster Univ.) and Prof. Lisa Isherwood (Institute for Theological Partnerships, University of Winchester), in collaboration with Dr Geraldine Smyth, Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin, and Dr Jolene Mairs Dyer, (Media, Film and Journalism, Ulster University).
Principal Investigator: Dr Geraldine Smyth.