In her first book, Rethinking Human Rights: Critical Insights from Palestinian Youth, Mitchell Institute Fellow: Rights and Social Justice, Dr Erika Jiménez draws on empirical research in the occupied West Bank and unpacks the three main layers of marginalisation identified by Palestinians youth in relation to their rights.  The main barrier was the Israeli occupation that denies them their humanity as Palestinians.  The second obstacle facing youth was the Palestinian pseudo-state (and those who represent it) that denies non-elites a voice through violent and bureaucratic means.  The third obstacle identified was the patriarchal aspects of the culture that prevent youth and girls specifically from exercising agency.

The book explores how these injustices shaped young people’s interpretations of human rights but also how they deployed human rights discourse as a vehicle to struggle against these very factors that sought to marginalise them.  Overall, this work is informed by decolonial, third world and Islamic contributions to human rights and human rights education.

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Erika Jiménez, Rethinking Human Rights: Critical Insights from Palestinian Youth (London: Hart/Bloomsbury, 2024)

After deftly navigating through the extensive body of peacekeeping scholarship, Henry argues that returning to critical theories enables scholars to come to see the patriarchal, colonial/racial, and martial foundations in peacekeeping politics, practice and scholarship.  The subsequent conclusion is that peacekeeping is not the benign, apolitical project it is often purported to be, this book encourages readers to imagine and enact alternative futures to peacekeeping.

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Marsha Henry, The End of Peacekeeping: Gender, Race, and the Martial Politics of Intervention (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

Does Counter-Terrorism Work? sets out a layered framework for understanding the various ways in which 'working' might be interpreted, and offers historically-grounded case studies of the post-9/11 War on Terror, the Northern Ireland Troubles, and Israel/Palestine as a way of analysing the complexities of counter-terrorist achievements and failings.

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Richard English, Does Counter-Terrorism Work? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024)

The chapters explore a variety of methodological approaches, including fieldwork, interviews, cultural analysis and archival research. They also engage with broader academic debates, such as how to work with research partners in an ethical manner.

Including valuable case studies from around the world, the book demonstrates how these methods can be used in practice. It is the first critical, in-depth discussion on queer methods and methodologies for research on political violence and conflict.

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Jamie J. Hagen, Samuel Ritholtz and Andrew Delatolla, Queer Conflict Research: New Approaches to the Study of Political Violence (Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2024)

Taking a chronological and all-island approach, the Handbook explores the complex and changing roles of religion both before and after partition.  It includes fresh perspectives on long-standing historical and political debates about religion, identity, and politics, including religion's contributions to division and violence.  It also features contributions on how religion interacts with education, the media, law, gender and sexuality, science, literature, minority religions, and memory.

Thirty-six leading scholars contributed to the volume, with those from Queen’s University including: S.J. Connolly, Gladys Ganiel, Myrtle Hill, Andrew R. Holmes, Christopher McCrudden, and Graham Walker.

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Gladys Ganiel and Andrew R. Holmes, The Oxford Handbook of Religion in Modern Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024)

The nature of popular culture is such that the challenges it poses to the gendered and racial order, for instance, are likely to be consumed—privately, in theaters or at home, alone or with friends or family—by more people than would ever read a feminist manifesto, attend a civil rights demonstration, or lobby a legislator for change. In the cultural desert of the late twentieth-century, pre-internet South, during a time in which there were fewer avenues of activism and organizing, other sources of feminism predominated, and pop culture is where many of us turned for guidance, for role models, and—whether or not we knew it—for consciousness-raising. In a region and during a time of neoconservative backlash in which women’s liberation was under attack, southern women’s pop culture offered a bridge between the second and third “waves” of feminism and a major challenge to contemporary antifeminist forces.

Why Any Woman examines key texts by and about southern women—the play Crimes of the Heart, the novels The Color Purple and Ugly Ways, the films Thelma and Louise and Beloved, the television shows Designing Women and The Oprah Winfrey Show—as a means of understanding the role of regional popular culture in defining and redefining American feminisms as we approached the twenty-first century. Taken as a collective, these texts expand how we think about the whats, wheres, whens, and hows of feminisms in recent U.S. history. "Why any woman give a shit what people think is a mystery to me," muses the blueswoman Shug Avery in Alice Walker's The Color Purple. Why Any Woman features southerners who, like Shug, rejected and reshaped gender norms, and their stories illustrate some of the ways regional pop culture has been and still is a crucial site of American feminisms.

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Keira V. Willams, Why Any Woman: Feminism and Popular Culture in the Late Twentieth Century South (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2023)

Eric examines the period immediately after independence, when the state engaged in anticlericalism; he then moves across the decades to the 2000s, when the ruling party and the opposition alike courted Muslims for electoral purposes, before reaching the 2010s, when tensions between ‘mosque and state’ returned.  Along the way, he explores a wide variety of phenomena, including the rise of Wahhabism, religious competition, state mediation, secularism, the alleged growth and radicalisation of Islam, and the origins of the ongoing insurgency.

What emerges is a rich history, attentive to different branches and elements of the Muslim community, looking far beyond the narrow perspective of jihad.

Taking a socio-historical perspective, Towards Jihad? unpacks a complex dynamic, which the jihadi insurgency is in fact now disrupting.  Understanding the long history of Muslims’ engagement with politics in Mozambique sheds light on where the country has come from, where it stands now amidst violent unrest, and where it might go next.

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Eric Morier-Genoud, Towards Jihad? Muslims and Politics in Postcolonial Mozambique (London: Hurst Publishers, 2023)

Wholly engaging with the field''s upward trajectory, this Handbook explores important new ground on existing issues of transitional justice, including masculinities, witnesses and the role of archives. This updated edition also engages with newly evolving areas of study, such as counter-terrorism, climate change, colonialism and non-paradigmatic transitions.

With theoretical and empirical contributions from a rich array of world leading practitioners and scholars, this cutting-edge second edition Research Handbook is an invaluable academic resource for students and researchers of sociology, transitional justice, criminal law and human rights law. With expertly written chapters it also provides practitioners with a consolidated overview of the latest scholarship and analysis of legal and policy developments. 

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Cheryl Lawther and Luke Moffett, Research Handbook on Transitional Justice (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2023)

The argument starts from an analysis of these discourses to trace the historical arc in which military interventions have increasingly been launched through reference to both the human rights discourse and humanitarian sentiments, and a desire to punish the perpetrators. The book continues with the analysis of practices involved in the post-intervention phase, looking at the ways in which states have been established as modes of governance (Kosovo), how punitive atmospheres have animated soldiers’ violence in the conduct of war (Iraq), and finally how interventions can expand moral control and a system of devolved surveillance in conjunction with both border control and the engagement of the International Criminal Court (Libya). In all these case, tensions and ambiguities emerge. These practices underscore how punitive intents were present in the expansion of liberal governance, demonstrating how the rhetoric of punishment was useful in legitimating the expansion of the liberal world.

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Teresa Tegenhardt, War as Protection and Punishment: Armed International Intervention at the 'End of History’ (Oxford: Routledge, 2023)

Based on original research in three continents, this book advances an interdisciplinary, comparative approach to exploring the role of sonic and creative practices in addressing the effects of conflict. Each case study illustrates how participatory arts genres are variously employed by musicians, arts facilitators, theatre practitioners, community activists and other stakeholders as a means of 'strategic creativity' to transform trauma and promote empowerment. This research further highlights the complex dynamics of delivering and managing creativity among those who have experienced violence, as they seek opportunities to generate alternative arenas for engagement, healing and transformation.

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Fiona Magowan, Julie M. Norman, Ariana Phillips-Hutton, Stefanie Lehner and Pedro Rebelo, Sounding Conflict: From Resistance to Reconciliation (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023)

These strategies are organised on a ‘memory spectrum’, which range from demolition, new construction, Disneyfication to supplementation, suspension, memorialisation.

The book reveals the complicated relationship between urban strategies and their influence on memory-making in the context of Berlin since 1895, with the help of film locations. It utilises cinematic representations of locations as an audio-visual archive to provide a deeper analysis of the issues brought up by 12 strategies and 24 case studies including the mutated Berlin Wall, Hitler’s demolished New Reich Chancellery, the appropriated TV Tower, the relocated Victory Column, and the city’s adapted bunkers and techno clubs in relation to memory-making.

Christopher S. Wilson and Gul Kacmaz Erk, Reframing Berlin: Architecture, Memory-Making and Film Locations (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2023)

Given the state’s failed attempts at establishing an official process for addressing the legacy of the conflict that lasted between 1968 and 1998, there are a number of community and academic initiatives that have taken up this task. The Prisons Memory Archive is one such project, whose aim is to research the possibilities of engaging with the story of the ‘other’ in a society that is emerging from decades of political violence.

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Jolene Mairs Dyer, Conor McCafferty, Cahal McLaughlin, The Prisons Memory Archive: A Case Study in Filmed Memory of Conflict (Delaware: Vernon Press, 2022)

Taking a critical look at the ‘normalisation’ of far-right thinking underpinned by gendered racisms, Vieten and Poynting trace the emergence of transnational far right populist movements and how these have been shaped by European colonialism, white supremacy, and ideological legacies of the Empire alike.

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Ulrike M. Vieten and Scott Poynting, Normalization of the Global Far Right: Pandemic Disruption? (Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited, 2022)

These interrogations are at the core of this book. It is the first critical and comprehensive review of the ways in which the social sciences have interpreted religion’s significance in Northern Ireland. In particular, it examines the shortcomings of existing interpretations and, in turn, suggests alternative lines of thinking for more robust and compelling analyses of the role(s) religion might play in Northern Irish culture and politics.

Through, and beyond, the case of Northern Ireland, the second objective of this book is to outline a critical agenda for the social study of religion, which has theoretical and methodological underpinnings. Finally, this work engages with epistemological issues which never have been addressed as such in the Northern Irish context: how do conflict settings affect the research undertaken on religion, when religion is an object of political and violent contentions? By analysing the scope for objective and critical thinking in such research context, this critical essay intends to contribute to a sociology of the sociology of religion.

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Véronique Altglas, Religion and Conflict in Northern Ireland: What Does Religion Do? (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2022)

The Arab uprisings and new and old conflicts in the Middle East, North Africa and other contexts where Islam is a prominent religion have sparked an interest in localising transitional justice in the legal systems of Muslim-majority societies. Taking into consideration the inherently pluralistic socio-legal realities of these communities, this project explores the synergies and tensions between international law and Islamic law in furthering the truth-seeking component of transitional justice. As such, it responds to the pressing need to understand how the norms and discourse of shari’ah can inspire and support initiatives to uncover truth about past (and ongoing) abuse in order to ensure accountability for widespread human rights violations perpetrated during conflict and authoritarianism.

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Alice Panepinto, Truth and Transitional Justice: Localising the International Legal Framework in Muslim Majority Legal Systems (London: Hart Publishing, 2022)

The authors explore the following questions:

• How do lawyers working within such settings imagine the law?
• How do they understand their ethical obligations towards their clients and the rule of law?
• What factors motivate them to use their legal practice and social capital to challenge repressive power?
• What challenges and risks can they face if they do so?
• And when do lawyers facilitate or acquiesce to illegality and injustice?

Drawing on over 130 interviews from Cambodia, Chile, Israel, Palestine, South Africa, and Tunisia, this book explores the extent to which theoretical understandings within law and society research on the motivations, strategies, tactics, and experiences of lawyers within democratic states apply to these more challenging environments.

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Kieran McEvoy, Louise Mallinder and Anna Bryson, Lawyers in Conflict and Transition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022)

Focusing on 4 main themes: educating for democratic-multicultural citizenship, models of shared learning, nurturing intercultural competencies, and reconciling dialogue in the face of conflicting narratives, the book draws on a wide range of international perspectives and insights to identify practical strategies for change in local contexts. 

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Dafna Yitzhaki, Tony Gallagher, Nimrod Aloni, Zehavit Gross, Activist Pedagogy and Shared Education in Divided Societies: International Perspectives and Next Practices (Netherlands: Brill, 2022) 

It advances a sociological view of peace that goes beyond vague notions of reconciliation, to constitute the restoration of moral sensibility, from which flows social solidarity, sociability and social justice. These concepts form the basis for a moral framework outlining what peace means sociologically

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John D. Brewer, Advanced Introduction to the Sociology of Peace Processes (London: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2022)

It has become an exceptionally important, if controversial, part of the new architecture that governs the relationship between the UK and the EU more generally, covering issues that range from trade flows to free movement, from North-South Co-operation to the protection of human rights, from customs arrangements to democratic oversight by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

This edited collection offers insights from a wide array of academic experts and practitioners in each of the various areas of legal practice that the Protocol affects, providing a comprehensive examination of the Protocol in all its legal dimensions, drawing on international law, European Union Law, and domestic constitutional and public law. This title is also available as Open Access.

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Christopher McCrudden, The Law and Practice of the Ireland-Northern Ireland Protocol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022)

When the relationship has been good, the Irish border has become - to all intents and purposes - open, invisible and criss-crossed with connections. Throughout its short existence, the symbolism of the border has remained just as important as its practical impact.

With the UK’s exit from the European Union, the challenge of managing the Irish border as a source and a symbol of British-Irish difference became an international concern. The solution found in the UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement gives the Irish border a globally unique status.

A century after partition, and as we enter the post-Brexit era, this book considers what we should know and do about this highly complex and ever-contested boundary line.

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Katy Hayward, What Do We Know and What Should We Do About the Irish Border? (London: Sage, 2021)

It considers the process of bordering after the partition of Ireland, to the Good Friday Agreement and attendant debordering to the post-Brexit landscape. The UK's departure from the EU meant rebordering in some form. That departure also reinvigorated the push for a ‘united Ireland’ and borderlessness on the Island.

As well as providing a nuanced assessment that will be of interest to followers of UK/Irish relations and European studies, this book’s analysis of processes of bordering/debordering/rebordering helps inform our understanding of borders more generally. Students and scholars of European studies, border studies, politics, and international relations, as well as anyone else with a general interest in the Irish border will find this book an insightful and historically-grounded aid to contemporary events.

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Cathal McCall, Border Ireland: From Partition to Brexit (London: Routledge, 2021)

Featuring expert scholars from across the globe, this volume examines the phenomenon of terrorism through regional case studies, largely written by local scholars, as well as through thematic essays exploring the relationship between terrorism and other historical forces. Each of the chapters - whether thematic or case-study focused - embodies new, research-based analysis which will help to inform and reshape our understanding of one of the world's most challenging problems.

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Richard English (ed.), The Cambridge History of Terrorism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021)

Public and academic debates concerning the high-profile ‘Belfast/Rugby Rape Trial’ and the subsequent Gillen review of the arrangements to deliver justice in serious sexual offence cases have been mirrored at a global level with movements such as #MeToo and #TimesUp. This book brings together the perspectives of practitioners and academics to discuss contemporary challenges surrounding the societal and legal framing of sexual violence. It examines key aspects of the criminal justice process including the challenges of supporting victims; of responding to a range of forms of sexual violence such as rape, peer abuse, intimate partner violence and forced-to-penetrate cases; as well as alternative perspectives and future reforms. It also considers broader debates including balancing the interests of victims and defendants; the impact of cultural myths and stereotypes; the challenges of the digital age; models of consent; legal representation for victims and anonymity and publicity surrounding trials.

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Rachel Killean, Eithne Dowds and Anne-Marie McAlinden, Sexual Violence on Trial (London: Routledge 2021)

The result of a research project commissioned by the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, the book is the first to capture such a full range of experiences of the Troubles of people from a Protestant background.

Presbyterian ministers, victims, members of the security forces, emergency responders, healthcare workers and ‘critical friends’ of the Presbyterian tradition are among those to provide insights on wider human experiences of anger, pain, healing, and forgiveness.

It also includes the perspectives of women and people from border counties and features leading public figures, such as former Deputy First Minister Seamus Mallon of the SDLP, Jeffrey Donaldson of the DUP, Garda Commissioner Drew Harris, and former Victims Commissioner Bertha McDougall.

Considering Grace contributes to the process of ‘dealing with the past’ by pointing towards the need for a ‘gracious remembering’ that acknowledges suffering, is self-critical about the past, and creates space for lament, but also for the future.

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Gladys Ganiel and Jamie Yohanis, Considering Grace: Presbyterians and the Troubles (Dublin: Merrion Press, 2021)

L’étude propose un examen des liens tissés entre ce théâtre, les idées des Lumières, la sagesse, le cosmopolitisme et le romantisme littéraire et montre la manière dont ces idées se reflètent dans les légendes celtiques et internationales et les mystères bretons. L’ouvrage s’intéresse également aux pièces historiques de Per-Jakez Helias, Planedenn Gralon Meur/Le Jeu de Gradlon (1950), Ar Roue Kado/Le Roi Kado (1960) et An Isild A-Heul / Yseult Seconde (1969), qui intègrent les thèmes de ces mêmes légendes celtiques et anciens mystères bretons tout en offrant un cheminement vers la philosophie morale.

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Eva Urban-Devereux, La Philosophie des Lumières dans le Théâtre Breton: Tradition et Influences/Enlightenment Philosophy in Breton Theatre (Rennes: TIR Université de Rennes 2, 2019)

In the context of public life, value is an important measure on the contribution to business and social good of activities for which strict financial measures are either inappropriate or fundamentally unsound.

A systematic, interdisciplinary examination of public value is necessary to establish an essential definition and up-to-date picture of the field. In reflecting on the ‘public value project’, this book points to how the field has broadened well beyond its original focus on public sector management; has deepened in terms of the development of the analytical concepts and frameworks that linked the concepts together; and has been applied increasingly in concrete circumstances by academics, consultants, and practitioners.　

This book covers three main topics; deepening and enriching the theory of creating public value, broadening the theory and practice of creating public value to voluntary and commercial organisations and collaborative networks, and the challenge and opportunity that the concept of public value poses to social science and universities. Collectively, it offers new ways of looking at public and social assets against a backdrop of increasing financial pressure; new insights into changing social attitudes and perceptions of value; and new models for increasingly complicated collaborative forms of service delivery, involving public, private, and not-for-profit players.

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Edited by Adam Lindgreen, Nicole Koenig-Lewis, Martin Kitchener, John D. Brewer, Mark H. Moore and Timo Meynhardt (London: Routledge, 2019)

Through the friendships of the Cornerstone Community and the Clonard-Fitzroy Fellowship, his involvement in secret talks with republican and loyalist paramilitary groups, and the setting up of the ‘Unity Pilgrims’, Gerry would play a crucial role in the Northern Ireland peace process. He believed the church could be ‘God’s peace process in human history’, and that dialogue and friendship would open hearts to the mutual understanding and trust that are the foundations of true peace.

Above all, Gerry was a pilgrim, struggling in his faith, journeying with his sisters and brothers, and always striving towards the goal of Christian unity, one small step at a time. This book draws on Gerry’s own words and writings, and the recollections of his family and friends, to uncover the story of this gentle priest, pilgrim and peacemaker.

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Gladys Ganiel, Unity Pilgrim: The Life of Fr Gerry Reynolds, CSsR (Redemptorist Communications, 2019)

The existence or extent of this correspondence tends to preoccupy academic as much as popular accounts of such a relationship. This volume looks however to the way in which Muslim politics and society are defined beyond and indeed after it. Reappraising the “first wave” of Islamic liberalism during the nineteenth century, the book describes the long and intertwined histories of these categories across a large geographical expanse. By drawing upon the contributions of scholars from a variety of disciplines – including philosophy, theology, sociology, politics and history – it explores how liberalism has been criticized and refashioned by Muslim thinkers and movements, to assume a reality beyond the abstractions that define its compatibility with Islam.

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Faisal Devji and Zaheer Kazmi, Islam after Liberalism (London: Hurst, 2017)

It argues that sociological ideas about the nature of everyday life complement and supplement the concept of everyday life peacebuilding recently theorized within International Relations Studies (IRS). It claims that IRS misunderstands the nature of everyday life by seeing it only as a particular space where mundane, routine and ordinary peacebuilding activities are accomplished.

Sociology sees everyday life also as a mode of reasoning. By exploring victims’ ways of thinking and understanding, this book argues that we can better locate their accomplishment of peacebuilding as an ordinary activity. The book is based on six years of empirical research in three different conflict zones and reports on a wealth of interview data to support its theoretical arguments. This data serves to give voice to victims who are otherwise neglected and marginalized in peace processes.

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John D. Brewer, Bernadette C. Hayes, Francis Teeney, Katrin Dudgeon, Natascha Mueller-Hirth and Shirley Lal Wijesinghe, The Sociology of Everyday Life Peacebuilding (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)

A sociological approach to compromise is contrasted with approaches in Moral and Political Philosophy and is evaluated for its theoretical utility and empirical robustness with in-depth interview data from victims of conflicts around the globe. The individual chapters are written to illustrate, evaluate and test the conceptualization using the victim data, and an afterword reflects on the new empirical agenda in victim research opened up by a sociological approach to compromise.

This volume is part of a larger series of works from a programme advancing a sociological approach to peace processes with a view to seeing how orthodox approaches within International Relations and Political Science are illuminated by the application of the sociological imagination.

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Edited by John D. Brewer, Bernadette Hayes and Francis Teeney, The Sociology of Compromise after Conflict ((London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)

It also provides new perspectives on how people of faith/religious communities are negotiating diversity, reconciliation, and ecumenism and considers religious individualization and the effects of the clerical sexual abuse scandals.

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Gladys Ganiel, Transforming Post-Catholic Ireland: Religious Practice in Late Modernity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)

But one of the most important questions about terrorism has, until now, been left remarkably under-scrutinized: does it work? Richard English now brings thirty years of professional expertise studying terrorism to the task of answering this complex―and controversial - question.

Focussing principally on four of the most significant terrorist organizations of the last fifty years (al-Qaida, the Provisional IRA, Hamas, and ETA), and using a wealth of interview material with former terrorists as well as those involved in counter-terrorism, he argues that we need a far more honest understanding of the degree to which terrorism actually works―as well as a more nuanced insight into the precise ways in which it does so.

Only then can we begin to grapple more effectively with what has become one of the most challenging and eye-catching issues of our time.

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Richard English, Does Terrorism Work? A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)

Emerging Christians see themselves as overturning outdated interpretations of the Bible, transforming hierarchical religious institutions, and re-orienting Christianity to step outside the walls of church buildings toward working among and serving others in the ''real world.'

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Geraldo Marti and Gladys Ganiel, The Deconstructed Church: Understanding Emerging Christianity (USA: Oxford University Press, 2014)

Using interview data with ex-combatants, this book explores religious influences upon violence and peace, and develops a model for evaluating the role of religion in transitional justice.

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John D. Brewer, David Mitchell & Gerard Leavey, Ex-Combatants, Religion, and Peace in Northern Ireland: The Role of Religion in Transitional Justice (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)

In articulating a vision for the public role of social science in the twenty-first century, John Brewer argues that these threats also constitute an opportunity for a new public social science to emerge, confident in its public value and fully engaged with the future of humanity in its teaching, research and civic responsibilities, while also remaining committed to science.

The argument is presented in the form of an interpretive essay: thought-provoking, forward-looking, and challenging to intellectual orthodoxy. It should be read and debated by all researchers and teachers in the social science disciplines who are concerned by the future of higher education and the relevance of their subjects to the future of humankind.

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John D. Brewer, The Public Value of the Social Sciences (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013)

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Zaheer Kazmi, Polite Anarchy in International Relations Theory (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)

Despite this, studies of jihadi ideas are at a relatively early stage and have yet to fully capture the richness of their wide-ranging social contexts and intellectual universes. This volume aims to address this lacuna at a time when wider currents of jihadi ideology seem poised to eclipse the long-term impacts of the decade-long global 'war of ideas' focused on al-Qaeda.

Contextualising Jihadi Thought aims to transcend the dominance of security-studies approaches in the study of militant groups by creating a broader framework for understanding the varied intellectual histories, political engagements and geographies of jihadi ideas. Contributions to the volume span a range of academic disciplines and areas of policy research including history, anthropology, political science, religious studies and area studies. Challenging prevailing policy understandings of a single jihadi ideological narrative, the book's chapters study militant currents of thought and the responses to them in Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, India, Pakistan, Egypt, South-East Asia and Europe as well as the global contexts within which transnational jihadism has been developed and propagated.

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Jeevan Deol and Zaheer Kazmi, Contextualising Jihadi Thought (USA: Oxford University Press, 2012)

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Richard English, Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA (London: Pan Macmillan, 2012 edn)

The author clarifies both the nature of the social and political vision of a number of major contemporary Northern Irish dramatists and the manner in which this vision is embodied in text and in performance. The book identifies and celebrates a tradition of playwrights and drama practitioners who, to this day, challenge and question all Northern Irish ideologies and propose alternative paths. The author’s analysis of a selection of Northern Irish plays, written and produced over the course of the last thirty years or so, illustrates the great variety of approaches to ideology in Northern Irish drama, while revealing a common approach to staging the conflict and the peace process, with a distinct emphasis on utopian performatives and the possibility of positive change.

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Eva Urban-Devereux, Community Politics and the Peace Process in Contemporary Northern Irish Drama (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2011)

It tells the stories of pro-life picketers, liberal peace-campaigning ministers, housewives afraid of the devil, students deconstructing their faith and atheists mortified by their religious past. Through hearing everyday stories about love, family, work and health, as well as politics, this book explores the many different worlds of ordinary evangelicals in Northern Ireland and the surprising ways in which their beliefs and practices can change over time. "Evangelical Journeys" is a well written book in a jargon-free style that will make it of interest to general as well as specialist readers

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Claire Mitchell and Gladys Ganiel, Evangelical Journeys: Choice and Change in a Northern Irish Religious Subculture (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2011)

This new study seeks to correct various misapprehensions about the role of the churches by pointing to their major achievements in both the social and political dimensions of the peace process, by small-scale, lesser-known religious peacebuilders as well as major players. The churches are not treated lightly or sentimentally and major weaknesses in their contribution are highlighted. The study challenges the view that ecumenism was the main religious driver of the peace process, focusing instead on the role of evangelicals, it warns against romanticising civil society, pointing to its regressive aspects and counter-productive activities, and queries the relevance of the idea of 'spiritual capital' to understanding the role of the churches in post-conflict reconstruction, which the churches largely ignore.

This book is written by three 'insiders' to church peacebuilding in Northern Ireland, who bring their insight and expertise as sociologists to bear in their analysis of four-years in-depth interviewing with a wide cross section of people involved in the peace process, including church leaders and rank-and-file, members of political parties, prime ministers, paramilitary organisations, community development and civil society groups, as well as government politicians and advisors. Many of these are speaking for the first time about the role of religious peacebuilding in Northern Ireland, and doing so with remarkable candour. The volume allows the Northern Irish case study to speak to other conflicts where religion is thought to be problematic by developing a conceptual framework to understand religious peacebuilding.

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John D. Brewer, Gareth I. Higgins and Francis Teeney, Religion, Civil Society, and Peace in Northern Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)

The book draws a distinction between the political and social dimensions of peace processes, arguing that each is dependent on the other. Consideration of the social peace process, neglected in conventional treatments of the subject, is made central to this volume. While complementing current approaches that emphasize institutional reform in politics, law and economics, it pays due attention to sociological factors such as gender, civil society, religion, the deconstruction of violent masculinities, restorative justice, emotions, hope, forgiveness, truth recovery, social memory and public victimhood. These important themes are fully illustrated with examples and in-depth case studies from across the globe.

The book locates itself within the growing debate about the positive impact of global civil society on peace and identifies the new forms of peace work engendered by globalization. It will be essential reading for students and scholars of peace studies in politics, international relations and sociology departments.

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John D. Brewer, Peace Processes: A Sociological Approach (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010)

Ganiel offers an original perspective on the role of a 'strong' religion in conflict transformation, and the misunderstood role of evangelicalism in the process.

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Gladys Ganiel, Evangelicalism and Conflict in Northern Ireland (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)

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Richard English, Irish Freedom: The History of Nationalism in Ireland (London: Pan Macmillan, 2006)