This talk will address the emergence of the border on the boundary line established by partition and its impacts on people living on the edge of both states in the subsequent decades. Border communities experienced conflict, dislocation, disruption and inconvenience but many found new ways to navigate the problems of their circumstances.

About Dr Peter Leary

Peter Leary is Vice Chancellor’s Fellow in History at Oxford Brookes University and author of Unapproved routes: histories of the Irish border, 1922–72 (Oxford University Press, 2016), winner of the American Conference for Irish Studies Donald Murphy Prize. From County Fermanagh, he studied at Goldsmiths’, the University of Ulster and Queen’s University Belfast and was the Canon Murray Fellow in Irish History at Oxford University and a Junior Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London. His articles on the Irish border have appeared in various publications including History Workshop Journal, Folklore and the Guardian.

Further Reading

• Catherine Nash, Brian Graham and Bryonie Reid, Partitioned lives: the Irish borderlands (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013).
• Darach MacDonald, Hard border: walking through a century of Irish partition (Dublin: New Island Books, 2018).
• Peter Leary, Unapproved routes: histories of the Irish border, 1922-72 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
• Border Roads to Memories and Reconciliation (borderroadmemories.com).