Revisiting the Promise of Peace in Northern Ireland: The Good Friday Agreement 15 Years On

The Promise of Peace Team is delighted to welcome you to our upcoming conference at the Ulster Museum, Belfast. The conference will be supported by The Leverhulme Trust/British Academy.

The conference will open with an address by Professor Richard English (University of St Andrews) followed by two panel sessions on the themes ‘Legacies of the Past’ and ‘Institutional Transformations’. The event will conclude with a plenary discussion. We warmly welcome your attendance and participation.

The event will begin with Tea & Coffee at 9.30am for a 10am start. Lunch is provided. Registration is free. Details with the full agenda will be circulated in due course. The event is supported by the Institute for the study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice, QUB and the Institute for Research in Social Sciences, UU.

The aim of this event is to provide an opportunity to reflect upon key objectives of the Belfast / Good Friday Agreement. We also hope to take the opportunity to open-up discussion about present challenges and future opportunities.

Information on the ‘Revisiting the Promise of Peace’ project:
Fifteen years after the signing of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (1998), what can we say about its promise for ‘a truly historic opportunity for a new beginning’? This project brings together a range of academics and non-academics from across a number of disciplines and vocations to revisit the promise of the Agreement. We aim to assess what impact it has made in the policy, judicial and institutional areas it specifically targeted: political reform, equality provision, working through legacies of the past (including police reform, prisoner release and victims' rights) and the building of new understandings and relationships within the island of Ireland and between Ireland and Britain. We will ask how can the Agreement be reinvigorated and reconceived for future generations. Through a series of thematic workshops extending over a one-year period this project will facilitate discussion and debate on emerging themes pertinent at this juncture in the peace process.

Promise of Peace Team:
Prof Colin Harvey (QUB)
Dr Máire Braniff (UUJ)
Dr Stefanie Lehner (QUB)
Dr Laura McAtackney (UCD)
Dr Cillian McGrattan (UUJ)
Dr Joanne Murphy (QUB)