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"The History of the Troubles (Accordin' to My Da)" is a play that premiered in Belfast in 2002 and depicted the violence and trauma of the Northern Irish Troubles from 1968 to 1998 in a comedic manner. The play resonated with audiences by providing a manageable and detached narrative of the Troubles, offering closure and a new beginning. It was well-received in Belfast but less successful in London, possibly due to different audience expectations. The play navigates the traumatic events without retraumatizing the audience and focuses on the life of a character whose life has not been directly impacted by the conflict. [Extracted from the article]

"Uncivil War: The British Army and the Troubles, 1966-1975" is a book edited by Huw Bennett that examines the role of the British Army during the early years of the conflict in Northern Ireland. The book challenges existing literature on the subject and focuses on military strategy and its interaction with policy during the Labour and Conservative governments in office at the time. The author argues that the British government's fear of civil war led to decisions that prolonged the conflict, including appeasing the Protestant majority and waging war on the Provisional IRA. The book also explores the complex relationship between the British Army and the civilian population in Belfast and Derry/Londonderry. The findings are based on extensive research and archival evidence. While the book offers a convincing account of the breakdown of trust between the British Army and Northern Ireland's Catholics, there may be differing opinions on alternative strategies and the shared responsibility for the failure to achieve a political solution during this period. Overall, "Uncivil War" is an essential read for scholars, students, and those interested in understanding the Troubles in Northern Ireland. [Extracted from the article]

Debate on Irish unification has increased in recent years, yet public attitudes on the processes that might lead to it are underexplored. This article examines the results of an online public consultation carried out in Northern Ireland in the summer of 2020 on how any future referendums on the unification question would best be conducted. It shows that hopes and fears on this question exist across society in Northern Ireland. It also reveals that public views are yet to crystallise on many of the design features of a referendum. There are some exceptions to this: there is a widespread feeling that the Brexit referendum process should not be replicated; and there are signs of divergent views emerging between communities on the franchise, referendum threshold, and use of citizens' assemblies. Nevertheless, we conclude that the lack of hardened views on most questions of process points to an opportunity for policymakers and impartial observers to foster agreement on how a referendum process should be conducted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of efforts to develop peace in Northern Ireland often attributes the foundation of the peace process to the dialogue between the then Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, and the Social Democratic and Labour Party's (SDLP) former leader, John Hume, in the late 1980s. However, it has been recognized that attempts to forge peace have a longer timeline, involving the interplay of several national and international historical contexts in which the European Community (EC) / European Union (EU) dimension and the role of the EU institutions in restoring peace and reconciliation has been generally neglected. The objective of this article is therefore to examine the European dimension of the Northern Ireland talks process, addressing the whole range of relationships affecting the political stalemate in the years preceding the signing of Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (GFA). Drawing on never-before-seen United Kingdom (UK) government and EC/EU archival documents and semi-structured élite interviews, this article highlights how the original dialogue on power-sharing and devolution in Northern Ireland included a much stronger EU dimension that it is publicly acknowledged. This article constitutes an emblematic case-study on the 'Europeanisation' of British politics in Northern Ireland, with findings uncovering a new and subtle dimension of the EC/EU role in the Northern Ireland peace process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brexit has significantly altered the trajectory of UK government policy towards Northern Ireland. The peace process was implicitly built on a presumption of continued joint EU membership by the UK and Ireland. The EU model of interdependence and cooperation was explicitly stated to be an inspiration by its key architect John Hume. However, the history of British–Irish cooperation over Northern Ireland is long and complex and cannot solely be understood through the lens of Europeanisation. Despite this, the aftermath of the 2016 referendum has seen a retreat by the UK government from a bilateral and consensual approach towards Northern Ireland to unilateralism and a 'muscular' unionist ideology. This has affected their governance there, hampering their relationship with local parties and undermining the agreed role of the Irish government. The impact of Brexit on UK government policy towards Northern Ireland has undoubtedly contributed to the destabilisation of the political settlement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the challenges of investigating the past in post-conflict societies, using Northern Ireland as a case study. It discusses the lack of resolution and controversies surrounding legacy investigations in Northern Ireland, as well as proposed changes in the UK government's 2023 Act. The author emphasizes the importance of effectively addressing the past and the need for a strategic and comprehensive approach to legacy investigations. The article also discusses the objective of truth versus justice and the value of providing information to families affected by the conflict. It highlights the importance of investigating and addressing the legacy of the Troubles in Northern Ireland in order to build trust and work towards a peaceful society. [Extracted from the article]

Amanda E. Donahoe's book, "Peacebuilding through women's community development: wee women's work in Northern Ireland," explores the role of women's community development in fostering peace in Northern Ireland. Donahoe highlights the invisibility of women's subjectivities during times of conflict and emphasizes the importance of including women in peacebuilding initiatives. Through extensive ethnographic fieldwork and interviews, Donahoe demonstrates how women are at the forefront of community recovery efforts after conflict. The book also examines the challenges faced by women activists, such as sectarian conflict and governmental polarization, and showcases the capacity of community development work to foster confidence and increase social capital. Overall, the book offers valuable insights into conflict resolution and the preservation of peace, making it a worthwhile read for those interested in the dynamics of conflict and peace in Northern Ireland. [Extracted from the article]

When Politics Are Sacralized: Comparative Perspectives on Religious Claims and Nationalism For Raz-Krakotzkin, Jewish Zionism itself conveys the colonisation of the Jewish imagination by Christian restorationist and millenarian theologies and their reliance on biblicalism, conceptions of chosenness, and redemption (39-40). For Hroub, religion's role in Palestinian nationalism differs in function from Zionism's constitutive reliance on a religious (or biblical) grammar that established claims of "ownership" of the land. [Extracted from the article]

This article argues that an understanding of the successful process which led to the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (GFA) provides a useful context for understanding the constraints and opportunities for peace making in Ukraine. In Northern Ireland political actors took a pragmatic Realist approach to negotiations using a range of political skills, including manipulation and deception, to bring various contrasting and often antagonistic audiences to support or acquiesce in the Good Friday Agreement. Accommodation was achieved against the determined efforts of British Conservative and Republican 'Dissident' Militarists, who preferred the 'moral certainties' of war to conciliation and the messy morality and politics of peace making. The successful Realist approach applied in Northern Ireland provides some hope for a negotiated end to the Ukraine war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides insights into life and work in Northern Ireland, particularly in the context of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. It offers a reflective perspective from a father and son, one involved in peace building through academic research, and the other, born in 1991 amid the peace efforts. The article explores the challenges and opportunities faced by these individuals, shedding light on the complex history of Northern Ireland, including the period known as "The Troubles."

The Good Friday Agreement contained a series of constructive ambiguities which were critical to ensuring that it received broad cross-political support. These ambiguities were reflective of the balance of political power of the time. Once institutionalized, they contained an immanent potential to morph in to structural contradictions as the re-balancing of demographic and political power in Ireland moved from latent to manifest status. As the Agreement reaches its 25th anniversary, three outstanding structural contradictions are manifesting, prompted by Brexit and the re-introduction of the 'Irish question' in to Irish-British relations. The constitutional status of the North of Ireland, the raison d'etre of statelet, and the inability of the governing institutions to function representationally or effectively have co-joined with a new balance of political power favoring Irish nationalism over Ulster unionism. Consequently, whether or not we are witnessing the twilight of the Good Friday Agreement will be contingent upon the short-medium term political decisions of key political actors, most notably, Ulster unionism. Three probable future developments will be further stasis, institutional reform, or (r)evolutionary constitutional change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the contradictions of British broadcasting in northern Ireland. Established in 1924, following war and partition, the BBC in the sectarian state of Northern Ireland was permitted to develop at an arm's length and out of sync with the national model of British broadcasting. Structured on the colonial presumption of neutrality on the part of British interests in Ireland, British television, during the Troubles, took for granted the legitimacy of partition and, as a result, misconstrued the causes of conflict. Throughout the period up to negotiation of the 1998 settlement – the Good Friday Agreement – and down to the present era, British perspectives on the crisis neglected the precedence of parallels in the Irish experience of partition, notably, since 2010, when confronted with the resurgent forces of ethnic nationalism (aka Brexit). In its post-public-service dotage, the BBC has responded poorly to a constitutional crisis from which the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (that is, the UK) may not recover. So much so that, by now, amid a series of politically awkward centenaries, it is argued, the BBC and the partitionist project of NI, are each in their own way manifesting signs of morbidity, and both are running out of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The travails of Brexit in Northern Ireland, however, derive directly from the fact that Northern Ireland is undoubtedly "special" on account of its history and politics. During the preparation of this issue, Northern Ireland was featuring heavily in the news. It was therefore only after the Brexit vote that the problem of Northern Ireland - and the issue of the Irish land border - acquired UK-wide prominence and emerged as a major obstacle to securing a UK-EU deal. [Extracted from the article]

In 2017 an application to de-proscribe The Red Hand Commando (RHC) loyalist paramilitary organisation was submitted by an organisation known as the Loyalist Communities Council (LCC) which has the backing of other proscribed loyalist groups including the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and RHC. The application was understandably considered negatively by some relatives of RHC victims as well as by Sinn Féin. The application was rejected for failing to comply with the necessary process of de-proscription which reinforces the criticism and difficulty for proscribed organisations that are no longer engaged in terrorism to de-proscribe. If the Northern Ireland Assembly and Commissions set up in Northern Ireland (NI) following the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) with support from the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) are to dismantle paramilitary groups, then they must take bold decisions and decide whether it is time to support the de-proscription of paramilitary groups that have relinquished political violence. This article recommends that agencies should set out a staged process which can be followed by proscribed organisations in NI interested in applying for de-proscription thereby enabling them to self-evaluate whether or not they are ready for de-proscription. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

NORTHERN IRELAND: BETRAYAL AND PUNISHMENT Ron Dudai's I Penality in the Underground: The IRA's Pursuit of Informers i is a wonderful companion to Dlamini's work. Deploying Mose's security police file, written in bureaucratic language and technicalities characteristic of such documents, Dlamini not only demonstrates how Mose's collaboration developed and transformed over time but also invokes intimacy in describing Mose's involvement in the creation, curation and maintenance of the Album. The stories narrated in Dlamini's book colourfully illustrate the intimacy and emotionality of informing.[5] In this respect, the stories of an African National Congress (ANC) defector, Gladstone Mose, and a police officer, Eugene Fourie, stand out. PUBLIC HISTORIES OF THE OCCUPIED CHANNEL ISLANDS Dlamini's and Dudai's works address the slow burn of repression over many decades of internal, external and insider-outsider occupation. [Extracted from the article]

This essay seeks to understand how since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, marking the end of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, filmic depictions of the conflict reinterpret and interrogate the traditional role of the 'hero' in the Irish republican cause. In an analysis of two films released after the Good Friday Agreement, Hunger (2008) and The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006), this essay argues that both films feature a hero-type Irish republican waging a brave-but-futile campaign against British oppression, but critique the myth of the Irish republican hero by severing the cycle of mythical violence by sowing doubt in the hero myth that serves as its base. This essay suggests that film is a low-stakes arena for the interrogation of volatile narratives that plays an important role in the reconceptualization of a conflict and, maybe even, its resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examining the writings of more than 150 IRA prisoners, this article explains why a majority of jailed republicans supported the movement's strategic reorientation between the anti-criminalisation protests of the late 1970s and the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. First, it argues, experiences of prison protests, culminating in the hunger strike of 1981, inclined prisoners to endorse electoral interventions to counter their isolation. Sinn Féin's subsequent successes impelled prisoners to back electoralism more constructively, envisioning an all-Ireland 'pan-nationalist' front. By the end of the 1980s, many republican prisoners regarded tactical eclecticism as vital for their campaign's advance. Second, the article contends, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, prisoners pragmatically approved new methods as open-ended experiments. Electoralism, pan-nationalism, and, in the 1990s, peace talks were supposed to aggregate and strengthen the struggle. Tactics were dispensable, and worthwhile only insofar as they enhanced the perceived prospects of victory. By the Good Friday Agreement, prisoners espousing a transitional, constitutional route to Irish unification regarded even the IRA's 'armed struggle' as suspensible. Woven through prisoners' voluminous acclaim for tactical adaptability, traditions of intra-movement discipline and unity cohered the bulk of the IRA's prison population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

But while Hepworth reminds us of the shifting electoral strategies of Sinn Féin and PIRA, he broadens the picture of the 1970s and 1980s to highlight new movements and ideas responsive to changing contexts during these decades. Hepworth demonstrates overlaps between PD and the French New Left, and for some members, crossovers with militant republicanism via the short-lived Northern Resistance Movement during 1971-72. Official "republicanism" contrasted markedly with that of the Provisional IRA (PIRA). [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Treaties & Documents / Razprave in Gradivo is the property of Institut za Narodnostna Vprasanja and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Treaties & Documents / Razprave in Gradivo is the property of Institut za Narodnostna Vprasanja and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Treaties & Documents / Razprave in Gradivo is the property of Institut za Narodnostna Vprasanja and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Treaties & Documents / Razprave in Gradivo is the property of Institut za Narodnostna Vprasanja and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Treaties & Documents / Razprave in Gradivo is the property of Institut za Narodnostna Vprasanja and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Treaties & Documents / Razprave in Gradivo is the property of Institut za Narodnostna Vprasanja and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Treaties & Documents / Razprave in Gradivo is the property of Institut za Narodnostna Vprasanja and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Treaties & Documents / Razprave in Gradivo is the property of Institut za Narodnostna Vprasanja and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article informs about the 25th-anniversary commemoration of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (B/GFA) and its role in ending the conflict in Northern Ireland. Topic include It discusses concerns about the UK government's attempts to dismantle significant elements of the B/GFA, including potential threats to the Human Rights Act 1998, which is intertwined with the agreement and has implications for justice and human rights in Northern Ireland.

This essay traces the development of gothic impulses in the art of Northern Irish visual artist Willie Doherty (b.1959, Derry), considering, briefly, the disquieting ambiguities of his early photographs, before studying specific examples of moving-image work made in the years following the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. The essay centres on the gothic attributes of films that present enigmatic characters in states of enduring confinement and existential uncertainty. Depicting these sometimes spectral figures in settings where the real seems to coincide with the unreal, the natural with the supernatural, Doherty draws on and defamiliarizes Northern Ireland's conditions of aftermath, while also widening his artistic lens to take account of other connections, other contexts. Two short, looping film works – The Amnesiac (2015) and Endless (2020), each focusing on the sustained suffering and shame of a solitary male figure – are analyzed in detail. Both films, in different ways, exemplify the combination of strict aesthetic control and symbolic or thematic 'excess' that characterizes Doherty's approach to the gothic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Inequality, Identity, and the Politics of Northern Ireland: Challenges of Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation" by Curtis C. Holland is a book that examines the history of Northern Ireland through the lens of inequality and its impact on peacebuilding and conflict transformation. The author explores various issues that have emerged in Northern Ireland since 1998, including the making and re-making of political identities, patterns of criminalization, and questions surrounding the use of space. The book particularly focuses on the unionist community and their claims of exclusion from narratives on peace. It also discusses urban experiences, issues facing the ex-combatant community, and challenges related to Brexit. The book draws from interviews and newspaper analysis to analyze these dynamics and their evolution over time. While the book does not extensively discuss the Good Friday Agreement, it addresses many of its key themes and highlights the new challenges and divisions that emerged after the cessation of violence. Overall, this book provides valuable insights into the complexities of peacebuilding and the ongoing struggles in Northern Ireland, which can be relevant to other divided societies as well. [Extracted from the article]

This article provides a critical reading of the 2021 Census of Population in Northern Ireland. A close examination of the available data on religion and nationality leads us to suggest that the Census provides a distorted portrait of Northern Irish society in two crucial, and connected, senses. First, the operation of the Census creates incentives for many residents to identify in ethnoreligious terms who might not ordinarily do so. Second, the forms of inter-communal competition generated by the decennial poll serve to obscure the degree of cultural diversity that exists in an increasingly secular society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically examines commemoration at the local-level, drawing on extensive qualitative research spanning over two decades in the Ardoyne community of North Belfast. This longitudinal approach allows us to track memory work in one community in the aftermath of political violence. The research shows that 'post-conflict' memorialization has shifted in Ardoyne, with less emphasis on victims' voice and unresolved justice legacy issues, and towards 'ownership' of republican activist dead and political rivals' memory counterclaims. The longitudinal lens provides an insight into evolving intra-community tensions over memory, struggles between memory activists, and what is driving memory contestation post-Good Friday Agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introduction, we set up a theme that runs through the special issue. There are, we suggest, two dominant readings of the Northern Irish peace process – one 'liberal,' the other 'nationalist' – that see the region in the process of becoming a multicultural (neo)liberal democracy, albeit in different constitutional settings. The teleogical nature of these perspectives means, however, that they fail to grasp what is perhaps the most essential characteristic of contemporary Northern Irish society, namely its liminality. If we are to understand the true nature of post-conflict Northern Ireland, it is imperative, we contest, to grasp its quintessential 'inbetweenness.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I dyed old linen bed sheets in the various colors that we'd need: blue to signify Protestants/Unionists/Loyalists (PUL), pink for Catholics/Nationalists/Republicans (CNR), yellow for politically/religiously unaligned, and dark gray for the arterial routes that were picked out on the original map. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century linen production was one of Belfast's key industries, so making the quilt from old Irish linen would mean that the very medium from which it was constructed would also be part of the story it told. I'm a creative writer who also works with textiles, sometimes combining the two media in the form of narrative textiles, so I could see the opportunity to use the map as the basis for a quilt - a linen quilt. [Extracted from the article]

This article begins by arguing that the UK race riots of August 2024 had their own distinct – and especially worrisome – sociological dynamics when it came to the disorder that occurred in Northern Ireland. The upsurge in race hate and racism has to be viewed in the context of the continuing existence of loyalist paramilitary groups and most especially the enduring sectarian division which is shown to have not been adequately addressed in the years since the Belfast Agreement of 1998. Most importantly, it is advanced that what lies at the heart of such social problems that beset Northern Ireland is a particular form of systemic racism: ‘systemic sectarianism’. It is the web of systemic sectarianism which ensures that sectarian division endures and operates to reproduce inequality and social injustice. Against this, it is asserted that there is a need to advance a social transformation agenda that enables people to develop a political vision and agenda that transcends race hate, racism and sectarianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Larres, Klaus Uncertain Allies: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Threat of a United Europe, Yale University Press: New Haven, CT, 2021; 432 pp.; 9780300173192, £55.00 (hbk) With Europe, Britain and America endeavouring to present a united front against Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, Klaus Larres has written an immensely timely book. Larres contends that all vestiges of America's previous "enlightened self-interest" approach that characterized the post-Second World War years were eradicated under Nixon and Kissinger. [Extracted from the article]

Despite all the contemporary difficulties that we face on the island of Ireland, twenty‐four years on from the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, there is a clear sense of hope for a better future. We should be optimistic for our shared future, even if we do not agree on what form that should take. We cannot discuss Northern Ireland or its future without acknowledging that Brexit has significantly shifted the conversation. Not only has it brought Anglo‐Irish relations to a low not seen in the past twenty‐five years, but it has also damaged the reputation of the UK internationally and brought the topic of Irish unity back to the fore of our political discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contends that the outcome of the prolonged dispute about the future constitutional status of Northern Ireland (NI) will be shaped by the emerging dynamic between 'old' and 'new' political identities in NI. The 'old' identities conceived political outcomes as defined by two monolithic ethno‐cultural blocs: nationalism (alongside republicanism) and unionism (alongside loyalism). Nationalism and unionism formed the 'two communities model' of consociational governance enshrined in the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (B/GFA). Today, despite the Agreement being in existence for over twenty years, growing numbers of citizens identify with neither ethno‐cultural category. Recent elections indicate that more pluralistic 'new' political identities are gaining ground at the expense of traditional alignments. The implications for NI's constitutional future are likely to be profound. The emerging constituency of non‐aligned voters will have a decisive impact on the final outcome of any border poll on Irish unification. Such voters typically support the cross‐community Alliance Party, the Greens, or the left People Before Profit (PBP) party. Crucially, these parties are concerned as much with economic and social issues as constitutional questions. In the context of growing political fluidity, the result of any future border poll remains contingent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is apparent that the consociational framework established by the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (B/GFA) is under threat, while the UK's withdrawal from the EU poses major challenges for maintaining peace, prosperity and social cohesion in Northern Ireland (NI). The contributions to this special collection examine key elements of the post‐Brexit reality, with a particular focus on NI and the future of the intergovernmental bodies established by the B/GFA. The implications of the UK government's attempt unilaterally to disapply parts of the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland are examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 2016 Brexit referendum a series of crises has gripped Northern Ireland's politics. This has had a destabilising effect across society, which has arguably been felt most acutely by political unionism. The Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (B/GFA) of 1998 created a series of institutions to deal with political conflict in Northern Ireland, manage cross‐border cooperation and normalise relations between the UK and Ireland. However, many aspects of it have been sparingly and ineffectually deployed, most notably the second and third strands dealing with north/south and east/west relations respectively. In this article, the authors argue that regular use of the institutional arrangements created by the Agreement would help to deal with the challenges currently facing Northern Ireland and help address unionist anxieties over the Protocol. Use of the North‐South Ministerial Council (NSMC), the British Irish Council (BIC) and the British‐Irish Intergovernmental Conference (BIIGC) should be prioritised. The unresolved issues arising from Brexit require a recommitment to the intergovernmental logic at the heart of the 1998 Agreement, despite the obstacles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the gender history of the peace process in Northern Ireland (NI). The Good Friday/Belfast Agreement laid the foundation for ending the violent conflict that had characterised the region since 1969. Understanding the role that gender has played in building peace in NI requires an analysis of the role of gender and gender-power relationships during the period of conflict, colloquially known as the NI troubles. Gendering both peace and conflict in NI exposes women's experiences during the conflict, which includes its gendered harms and women's resistance to gender hierarchies, stereotypes, and the militarism that marked the context. When opportunities for peace emerged in the 1990s, women wanted their voices to be heard during the negotiations that followed. However, the peace-building processes and institutions that materialised meant that women faced many challenges in their struggle for a positive peace that included addressing the gendered inequalities of the past and the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Influenced by colonial relations and post-colonialism, the contrast between Irish and (Anglo-) Irish or English characters has been a focal point in twentieth century Irish literature. From racist nineteenth cartoons in Punch magazine depicting the Irish as monkeys, to the themes of isolation that pervade the work of Anglo-Irish writers, otherness has been central to these representations. Political and economic developments have created new contexts for representation in recent decades: the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and subsequent end to a period of violent sectarian conflict known as the Troubles, the Celtic Tiger period of economic growth and prosperity, and modern social developments that include referenda on abortion and gay marriage, have changed both the experience of living in Ireland and the expression of Irish identity. Consequently, contemporary Irish identity seeks to include an increasingly diverse population and focuses less on Irish/English binaries, instead considering urban/rural differences, environmental concerns, and the impact of globalisation. Cartoon Saloon's Wolfwalkers (2020) presents one opportunity to consider 'post-otherness' within Irish storytelling and cinema. Its key protagonists, Mebh Óg MacTíre and Robyn Goodfellowe, strongly resonate with one another despite their cultural differences, forging a bond on their quest to validate their sense of self. They neither share a cultural background nor identify entirely with their respective communities but, in coming together to face existential challenges, the pair become more comfortable with their own identities. Blurring the definition of and distinction between groups, it becomes difficult to establish who is the Other. Wolfwalkers presents characters and themes akin to Anglo-Irish literature, but responding to their lived experience as earlier writers did theirs, the directors rework Irish tropes for a contemporary audience. By presenting historically inspired narratives, the film shows new perspectives on character development, utilising child heroes in a way that differs from earlier approaches. Representations of colonialism and English-Irish duality from nineteenth-and early twentieth-century literature are re-imagined here, influenced by post-nationalist thinking and the efforts of a transnational team of artists targeting an international audience. There are also elements of the film that reflect postcolonialism and orientalism, complicating the film's depictions of Irishness. An analysis of Wolfwalkers demonstrates that otherness is highly subjective, and when Robyn and Mebh cross the boundary between their two worlds, they reject the illusion of difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]