Peace and Conflict – Understanding Our World
This podcast series looks at conflict and peace-building around the world, from Afghanistan to Ireland, Colombia and South Africa to the Middle East.
Academics from Queen’s University, Belfast, share their experiences and reflections on how societies can transition from conflict to peace and how the traumatic political legacies of conflict can endure and continue to shape political discourse today.
Drawing from a range of expertise, Queen’s academics discuss how factors such as education and economics affect and define conflict, why people join illegal organisations, the definition of `terrorism’ itself and the impact of the marginalisation of women in peace building.
Spread across eight episodes, we hear from Queen’s University academics, whether currently working on the front-line in Afghanistan, or involved in shaping education systems in Northern Ireland and other contexts, or providing insights globally in their conflict-related research.
Professor Richard English is an internationally recognised historian, academic and author having conducted extensive research in Irish politics and history, political violence and terrorism.
His expertise lies in Irish history and conflict as well as the wider subject of international terrorism. In his more recent works, Professor English explores the response after 9/11 and its shortcomings, and argues that we cannot adequately respond to the practical challenge of terrorist violence around the world unless we are more honest about the precise nature of the phenomenon, and about explaining its true and complex causes.
Professor English is the author of eight books, including the award-winning studies Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA (2003) and Irish Freedom: The History of Nationalism in Ireland (2006). His most recent book, Does Terrorism Work? A History, was published in 2016 by Oxford University Press.