An interdisciplinary team have secured a major GCRF / AHRC grant, this team is made up of Senior Research Fellow, Professor Rhiannon Turner, pictured, (Senator George J. Mitchell Institute), Professor Joanne Hughes (Director of the Centre for Shared Education at Queen’s & UNESCO Chair on Globalising a Shared Education Model for Improving Relations in Divided Societies) and Dr Danielle Blaylock (School of Education).

‌The project will be led by the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, the Centre for Shared Education and the Centre for Identity and Intergroup Relations, and in collaboration with the Centre for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution, St Cyril and Methodius University Skopje, Sarajevo School of Science and Technology, and University of Zagreb, an interdisciplinary group of researchers have received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council as part of their Global Challenges Research Fund.

The funded project entitled, Education in Divided Societies: Developing and researching shared education in the Republic of Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia, will develop a strategic network of key educational stakeholders in Northern Ireland and the Balkan region whose work contributes to peace building through the promotion of intergroup contact and intercultural dialogue in education. In doing so, the project will establish an infrastructure that connects academics, practitioners, NGOs, and policymakers across four diverse contexts, each transitioning from violence to sustainable peace.

The project is due to commence at the start of the new year and will include a number of in-country events designed to forge relationships, to facilitate, promote, and develop models of shared education appropriate to each context, and to enhance the internal capacity within each jurisdiction to effective implement, monitor, and evaluate shared education initiatives.

Bringing together members from post-conflict societies with the common challenge of separate education for divided groups will allow for the generation of distinctive insights and perspectives to inform a broader discussion around the role of education in divided societies to act as a vehicle for reconciliation and social change.