A blog series has been launched on the University of Notre Dame’s ‘Contending Modernities’ website. The series is a result of a joint Queen’s University-University of Notre Dame workshop, which was hosted by the Mitchell Institute in August 2023.

The posts explore ‘turbulent religions’, including the study of how religious actors, institutions, and discourses disrupt societal and political norms and practices, whether by contributing to violence or peacefully challenging injustices and inequalities.  They analyse religion’s role in historical and contemporary currents of violence – most notably around the themes of race and nationalism – and their relation to apocalyptic and conspiratorial thinking. 

In the latest blog, Mitchell Institute Fellow: Legacy, Dr Cathal McManus, writes on 'Religion, Politics, and the Orange Order in Northern Ireland: Defending Protestant Britain in the Age of Secularism'.

https://contendingmodernities.nd.edu/theorizing-modernities/orange-order-northern-ireland/

 

Dr Cathal McManus

Dr McManus is a lecturer in the School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work (SSESW) and Queen’s University Belfast and a Fellow of the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice. He is interested in processes of Othering and how these contribute to the development and maintenance of social divisions and conflict. Related to this he is interested in identity formation and nationalism. His work has been published in journals such as Nations and Nationalism, Terrorism and Political Violence, and Ethnopolitics.