In Conversation: Researching the Conflict
Online
Wednesday 29th April 2026
This online event is in partnership with the Memory, Narrative & Histories Research Collective (MNHRC).
Join us for a conversation about how researchers approach their work on conflict.
Divided into two panels on different topics, researchers from MNHRC will discuss how they approach their own research on the conflict in and about Northern Ireland.
Nadine, Geoff and Maude will discuss how their research has challenged silences about the conflict in memory culture(s). Fearghus, Graham and Sandra will discuss the use of the ‘everyday’ and emotions in their research.
Chair:
Dr Áine McKenny
Interim Curator at The Peace Museum and co-founding member of MNHRC.
Speakers:
Nadine Finch
Nadine has written and published widely on child migration and trafficking, policing the Irish community and issues relating to the state. She is currently the Vice Chair of Labour Movement for Irish Unity, an executive member of Caribbean Labour Solidarity and a trustee of Statewatch. She was a human rights barrister practising in London from 1991 to 2015, a fee-paid judge in the First-tier Tribunal of the Immigration and Asylum Chamber from 2006 to 2015 and a salaried judge in the Upper Tribunal of the Immigration and Asylum Chamber from 2015 to 2020. Current research interests include legacy issues in Northern Ireland and their impact on Britain, the current discussion on Irish unity and the history of struggle against racism and fascism in Britain.
Geoffrey Bell
Dr Geoffrey Bell was born in Belfast and is a graduate of Dublin (Trinity) and Leeds. He has had a career in authorship, community history and film making. His first book was The Protestants of Ulster (1976), his PhD was published and rewritten as Hesitant Comrades (2016), his latest book is The Twilight of Unionism (2024). He wrote two documentaries for Channel Four. He is a co-founder of Eastside Community Heritage (London), of which he was chair for five years.
Maude Casey
Maude Casey was born in Luton to Irish parents and grew up in north London. Her father and brother worked for British Railways and Transport for London and her mother and sister were nurses. She studied at the University of Sussex, the Universite d’Aix-Marseille and Goldsmiths’ College, University of London. Her novel Over the Water (The Women’s Press; London 1987) was shortlisted for the Whitbread Award, The Fawcett Book Prize and the Carnegie Medal. Her recent work has been shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize. She works collaboratively as a grassroots activist with Brighton Migrant English Project, Brighton Against the Arms Trade, StopL3Harris and the Remaking Picasso’s Guernica Collective. After a long period prioritising care responsibilities, she’s currently working on her second novel, which in draft form won the 1991 Arts Council Writer’s Award. She writes about memory and silence, and weaving impacts of exile, loneliness, racism and violence into transformative narratives of time travel and love.
Fearghus Roulston
Fearghus Roulston is Chancellor’s Fellow in the History of Activism at the University of Strathclyde and co-director of the Scottish Oral History Centre. His first book, Belfast Punk and the Troubles: An Oral History, came out with Manchester University Press in 2022; his second book, on historical discourse and temporality in post-conflict Ireland, is coming out with Cambridge University Press in 2025. He sits on the editorial board of the Oral History Journal. Broadly, he’s interested in the ways in which interpretative oral history and memory studies can illuminate people’s affective and discursive relations to politics, place and culture, in public or community history, in cultural and social history.
Graham Dawson
Graham’s work in historical cultural studies explores memory, subjectivity, the politics and temporal dynamics of ‘post-conflict’ culture, and the legacies of the Northern Irish Troubles in Ireland and Britain. His books include Making Peace with the Past? Memory, Trauma and the Irish Troubles (2007) and Afterlives of the Troubles: Life Stories, Culture and Conflict Transformation in Northern Ireland (2026). Formerly Director of the Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories, University of Brighton, he is now Visiting Professor in INCORE, Ulster University and a co-founder of the Memory, Narrative and Histories Research Collective.
Sandra Plummer
Sandra is an art historian and photography theorist. She is currently researching photographic representations of Bloody Sunday. Her approach to photographs of the Troubles includes the exploration of affect, emotion, and trauma as well as her own postmemory of Bloody Sunday. Sandra is Senior Lecturer in Critical and Contextual Studies in Contemporary Art Practice, at DJCAD, University of Dundee. Her PhD explored the ontology of the photograph after Deleuze. She is currently completing a book chapter on Fulvio Grimaldi’s Blood in the Street – ‘Troubling images: Bloody Sunday and its photographic aftermath’. Her chapter ‘Whatever you say, say nothing: Gilles Peress and the photographic representation of Bloody Sunday in Derry’ is forthcoming in Beyond the Frame: Essays on Twentieth-century Irish Photography.
About the Memory, Narrative & Histories Research Collective
Memory, Narrative & Histories Research Collective is a community of historical researchers and practitioners, comprised of academics, students, independent scholars, heritage and museum professionals, oral and community historians, writers, artists, film-makers and others.
Their members investigate the complex relationships between past, present and future, including subordinate and marginalised histories, conflict aftermath, cultural history and popular memory.
The foundation of their work is a commitment to historical research that challenges social inequalities, oppressions and injustices, interrogating received meanings of the past, and producing alternative accounts to generate transformative thinking and politics.
Membership is open to all individual researchers in the UK and internationally who share our aims and ethos.
www.memorynarrativehistories.com
Registration closes at 12 noon on 29 April 2026. A Zoom link will be emailed to you on the day of the event.
Join us for a conversation about how researchers approach their work on conflict.
Divided into two panels on different topics, researchers from MNHRC will discuss how they approach their own research on the conflict in and about Northern Ireland.
Nadine, Geoff and Maude will discuss how their research has challenged silences about the conflict in memory culture(s). Fearghus, Graham and Sandra will discuss the use of the ‘everyday’ and emotions in their research.
Chair:
Dr Áine McKenny
Interim Curator at The Peace Museum and co-founding member of MNHRC.
Speakers:
Nadine Finch
Nadine has written and published widely on child migration and trafficking, policing the Irish community and issues relating to the state. She is currently the Vice Chair of Labour Movement for Irish Unity, an executive member of Caribbean Labour Solidarity and a trustee of Statewatch. She was a human rights barrister practising in London from 1991 to 2015, a fee-paid judge in the First-tier Tribunal of the Immigration and Asylum Chamber from 2006 to 2015 and a salaried judge in the Upper Tribunal of the Immigration and Asylum Chamber from 2015 to 2020. Current research interests include legacy issues in Northern Ireland and their impact on Britain, the current discussion on Irish unity and the history of struggle against racism and fascism in Britain.
Geoffrey Bell
Dr Geoffrey Bell was born in Belfast and is a graduate of Dublin (Trinity) and Leeds. He has had a career in authorship, community history and film making. His first book was The Protestants of Ulster (1976), his PhD was published and rewritten as Hesitant Comrades (2016), his latest book is The Twilight of Unionism (2024). He wrote two documentaries for Channel Four. He is a co-founder of Eastside Community Heritage (London), of which he was chair for five years.
Maude Casey
Maude Casey was born in Luton to Irish parents and grew up in north London. Her father and brother worked for British Railways and Transport for London and her mother and sister were nurses. She studied at the University of Sussex, the Universite d’Aix-Marseille and Goldsmiths’ College, University of London. Her novel Over the Water (The Women’s Press; London 1987) was shortlisted for the Whitbread Award, The Fawcett Book Prize and the Carnegie Medal. Her recent work has been shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize. She works collaboratively as a grassroots activist with Brighton Migrant English Project, Brighton Against the Arms Trade, StopL3Harris and the Remaking Picasso’s Guernica Collective. After a long period prioritising care responsibilities, she’s currently working on her second novel, which in draft form won the 1991 Arts Council Writer’s Award. She writes about memory and silence, and weaving impacts of exile, loneliness, racism and violence into transformative narratives of time travel and love.
Fearghus Roulston
Fearghus Roulston is Chancellor’s Fellow in the History of Activism at the University of Strathclyde and co-director of the Scottish Oral History Centre. His first book, Belfast Punk and the Troubles: An Oral History, came out with Manchester University Press in 2022; his second book, on historical discourse and temporality in post-conflict Ireland, is coming out with Cambridge University Press in 2025. He sits on the editorial board of the Oral History Journal. Broadly, he’s interested in the ways in which interpretative oral history and memory studies can illuminate people’s affective and discursive relations to politics, place and culture, in public or community history, in cultural and social history.
Graham Dawson
Graham’s work in historical cultural studies explores memory, subjectivity, the politics and temporal dynamics of ‘post-conflict’ culture, and the legacies of the Northern Irish Troubles in Ireland and Britain. His books include Making Peace with the Past? Memory, Trauma and the Irish Troubles (2007) and Afterlives of the Troubles: Life Stories, Culture and Conflict Transformation in Northern Ireland (2026). Formerly Director of the Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories, University of Brighton, he is now Visiting Professor in INCORE, Ulster University and a co-founder of the Memory, Narrative and Histories Research Collective.
Sandra Plummer
Sandra is an art historian and photography theorist. She is currently researching photographic representations of Bloody Sunday. Her approach to photographs of the Troubles includes the exploration of affect, emotion, and trauma as well as her own postmemory of Bloody Sunday. Sandra is Senior Lecturer in Critical and Contextual Studies in Contemporary Art Practice, at DJCAD, University of Dundee. Her PhD explored the ontology of the photograph after Deleuze. She is currently completing a book chapter on Fulvio Grimaldi’s Blood in the Street – ‘Troubling images: Bloody Sunday and its photographic aftermath’. Her chapter ‘Whatever you say, say nothing: Gilles Peress and the photographic representation of Bloody Sunday in Derry’ is forthcoming in Beyond the Frame: Essays on Twentieth-century Irish Photography.
About the Memory, Narrative & Histories Research Collective
Memory, Narrative & Histories Research Collective is a community of historical researchers and practitioners, comprised of academics, students, independent scholars, heritage and museum professionals, oral and community historians, writers, artists, film-makers and others.
Their members investigate the complex relationships between past, present and future, including subordinate and marginalised histories, conflict aftermath, cultural history and popular memory.
The foundation of their work is a commitment to historical research that challenges social inequalities, oppressions and injustices, interrogating received meanings of the past, and producing alternative accounts to generate transformative thinking and politics.
Membership is open to all individual researchers in the UK and internationally who share our aims and ethos.
www.memorynarrativehistories.com
Registration closes at 12 noon on 29 April 2026. A Zoom link will be emailed to you on the day of the event.
