Biography

  • Professor of Social and Political Conflict, University of Portsmouth.
  • Visiting Fellow, John McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies, University of Massachussetts, Boston, USA.
  • Distinguished Senior Research Fellow, Edward M. Kennedy Institute for Conflict Intervention, NUI, Maynooth, Ireland.
  • Visiting Fellow, Northumbria University

Research interests

Research interests include: Conflict resolution, politics, identity, religion, war, peace, strategy, dialogue, and negotiation.

My current research is concerned with the shift from conflict to ‘post-conflict’ society in Northern Ireland and, in particular, areas such as community development, strategic planning and social inclusivity. This work has resulted in working with the British, Irish and American governments as well as a range of groups and high-level contacts in Northern Ireland on these areas. The British and Peace in Northern Ireland was published in 2015 and Inside Accounts: The Irish Government and Peace in Northern Ireland: From Sunnnngdale to the Good Friday Agreement, Vol One; Inside Accounts: The Irish Government and Peace in Northern Ireland, Vol 1 and From the Good Friday Agreement to the Fall of Power-Sharing, Vol 2 were published in 2020. A further publication, 'Motivation and Intervention in the Northern Ireland Peace Process; An Interview wth President Bill Clinton' was released in Harvard's Negotiation Journal in 2019.