Dr Katy Hayward has received a major ESRC Fellowship on the UK in a Changing Europe on this subject in 2019-2022 will not only record and explain the impact of Brexit of Northern Ireland, but also the impact that Northern Ireland will inevitably have on post-Brexit landscape for the UK and EU itself. Into a particularly febrile and dangerously uncertain environment, this Fellowship will allow us to reassert the invaluable role for non-partisan knowledge and rigorous evidence in political debate, providing a solid foundation for public understanding, policymaking and future planning.

In 2017, Dr Gladys Ganiel received funding from the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs for an action research project with the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, which critically evaluated Presbyterian responses to the Troubles in light of contemporary debates on reconciliation. Considering Grace: Presbyterians and the Troubles, by Ganiel and Jamie Yohanis, was published by Merrion Press in 2019, forming the basis for engagement within the churches and wider society.

See: https://gladysganiel.com/my-books/considering-grace-presbyterians-and-the-troubles/

Non-sectarian social movements and consociationalism in Northern Ireland and Lebanon.

Prof John Nagle received a Leverhulme Fellowship to comparatively examine the consequences of postwar power-sharing on LGBTQ and feminist groups in Lebanon and Northern Ireland. The research further analyses how LGBTQ movements mobilize for rights within consociational power-sharing systems.

Researchers from Sociology initiated the Knowledge Exchange Seminar Series (KESS) in at the Northern Ireland Assembly and direct all-Ireland residential summer school aimed at ‘educating’ civil servants about the importance of welfare. 

Students can undertake Study Abroad through Erasmus schemes (with universities in Barcelona, Lund in Sweden, Paris, Aix en Provence, in France, Munich and Dusseldorf in Germany, Rotterdam and Nijemegen in the Netherlands, Jyvaskyla in Finland) as well as visiting international students who take Sociology modules, particularly those connected to research expertise for which Queen’s is renowned (e.g. Conflict Transformation and Social justice, Childhood, Public Health etc.)

Sociology academic Gladys Ganiel is co-editor of a new landmark publication, the first volume to offer such a comprehensive and wide-ranging treatment of the role of religion on the island of Ireland between 1800 and the present day. The Oxford Handbook of Religion in Modern Ireland features 32 chapters exploring the relationships between religion, society, politics and everyday life.

I am a sociologist of religion specializing in religion, conflict and peacebuilding in Northern Ireland, and religious trends on the island of Ireland. My undergraduate teaching includes modules on qualitative research skills and the sociology of conflict and peace processes. At graduate level, I teach religion and peacebuilding and qualitative research. My religion and peacebuilding module won the 2018 ‘Module of the Year’ award from the Students’ Union.