People within INCORE

Dr Maire Braniff

Senior Lecturer

Dr Máire Braniff joined Ulster University in 2013 as a Lecturer in sociology and was Director of INCORE (International Conflict Research Institute) from 2016-2018 .

Máire’s research expertise lies at the nexus of peace, justice and truth recovery.

In her work she explores competing and conflicting narratives, relationships of power and victimhood in a comparative and conceptual way.

Specifically, she researchers, supervises and teaches on a wide range of issues in peace and conflict including: conflict resolution, legacies of violent conflict, memory and commemoration, victimhood and peace agreements in the following areas: Balkans, Northern Ireland, South Caucasus and South East Asia.

She has published a number of books on politics and societal change. Her monograph was published by IB Tauris in 2011 “Integrating the Balkans: from Conflict to EU Expanision”.

Máire's co-authored books include: “Inside the Democratic Unionist party: from Protest to Power” (OUP) with Tonge et al and “Conflict as Commemoration” with McDowell (Palgrave). A forthcoming book on Ulster Unionist Party will be published by OUP in 2017.

Máire has held several research grants and is involved in international research partnerships. She has a British Academy Rising Star Award for Engagement holder in 2016/2017.

Máire has been involved in the peer-review process for the European Commission Research Executive Agency, the AHRC Peer Review College and she is an Academic Friend of the European Peacebuilding Liaison Office (EPLO).

Dr Jonny Byrne

Senior Lecturer

Dr. Jonny Byrne is currently a Lecturer and Year Two Tutor in criminology and criminal justice, in the School of Criminology, Social Policy and Politics at Ulster University. Jonny lectures on issues relating to policing and security, countering violent extremism and psychology within the criminal justice system.

He has completed a number of research projects on public attitudes to peace walls, paramilitary violence, young people’s participation in political violence, community experiences of public order policing in Northern Ireland, bonfires, and the manipulations of commemorations and celebrations in a contested society.

Jonny works closely within a number of organisations including the Police Service for Northern Ireland (PSNI) and the Department of Justice (DoJ) on areas pertaining to ‘policing with the community, confidence and accountability’. In the previous two years he has been awarded two ESRC Knowledge Exchange awards, were he worked with the British government and the DoJ on supporting policy making through academic research and analysis on issues such as parades, flags, bonfires and physical segregation.

Jonny is also a member of the European Union Radicalisation Awareness Network (Youth, Families and Community Working Group and the Police and Law Enforcement Working Group). Dr. Byrne is a member of the Youth Advisory Group to the Northern Ireland Policing Board. He has also been responsible for two recent reports on radicalisation in Northern Ireland (2016) for the International donor Co-operation Ireland, looking at motivations behind young people’s participation in political violence.

He is currently involved in a Horizon 2020 award exploring soft skills in peacebuilding and is also managing two research projects, looking at the policy around commemorations and identity in a shared society (for the community relations council) and the challenges around implementing a policing with the community strategy in a divided society (for the PSNI).

Nigel Glenny

Lecturer / Site Director of Augsburg CGEE

Nigel Glenny is a graduate of Queens University Belfast with a First Class Honours degree in Education (Religious Studies, History).

Nigel began his career as a history teacher, then moved into local government as an education officer, where he designed and taught a wide range of experiential learning programs for schools, colleges, youth and community groups.

He also worked for several years at a leading non-governmental organization engaged in peace and capacity-building initiatives.  There he created learning resources in the areas of civic engagement and peacebuilding, led programmes in facilitating student engagement, and trained teachers and youth workers throughout Ireland and the United States.

Nigel joined Ulster University at the beginning of 2007 as a Lecturer in international education and development based at the University’s UNESCO Centre, School of Education.  Here he also directed the HECUA programme.

In 2013, following the development and extension of the HECUA programme, Nigel moved with the HECUA programme to it’s new home at Incore (the University’s international conflict research institute).

The HECUA programme is a highly regarded and well-established interdisciplinary semester-long programme delivered in partnership with The Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs (HECUA) based in Minnesota, USA. The programme, through its experiential pedagogical model integrating the classroom with extensive fieldwork and community-based internships, provides unique insights into Northern Ireland’s conflict and peace process.

Professor Brandon Hamber

The John Hume and Thomas P. O'Neill Chair in Peace

Professor Brandon Hamber is the John Hume and Thomas P. O’Neill Chair in Peace based at the International Conflict Research Institute (INCORE) at Ulster University. He is also a member of the Transitional Justice Institute at the university, and is an Honorary Professor of the African Centre for Migration and Society at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.  He has consulted to a range of community groups, policy initiatives and government bodies in Northern Ireland and South Africa.  He has undertaken consulting and research work, and participated in various peace and reconciliation initiatives in Liberia, Mozambique, Bosnia, the Basque Country and Sierra Leone, among others. He has written extensively on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the psychological implications of political violence, masculinity, and the process of transition and reconciliation in South Africa, Northern Ireland and abroad.  He has published some 30 journal articles, over 25 book chapters and 4 books.

Professor Brandon Hamber is the John Hume and Thomas P. O’Neill Chair in Peace at Ulster University based at the International Conflict Research Institute (INCORE).

He is also a member of the Transitional Justice Institute at the University, and is a Visiting Professor of the African Centre for Migration and Society at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.

He has undertaken consulting and research work, and participated in various peace and reconciliation initiatives in Northern Ireland, South Africa, Liberia, Mozambique, Bosnia, Colombia, the Basque Country and Sierra Leone, among others.

He has published some 30 journal articles, over 25 book chapters and 4 books. In 2015, with Springer he published Psychosocial Perspectives on Peacebuilding (Editors: Hamber and Elizabeth Gallagher) and Healing and Change in the City of Gold: Case Studies of Coping and Support in Johannesburg (Editors: Ingrid Palmary, Hamber, Lorena Núñez). 

Transforming Societies after Political Violence: Truth, Reconciliation, and Mental Health was published by Springer in 2009, and republished in Spanish by Ediciones Bellaterra.

In 2010-2013 he was a Mellon Distinguished Visiting Scholar at University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

He has been awarded The Paul Harris medal for contributions to peace by Rotary (2013), and was listed as one of the Top 100: The most influential people in armed violence reduction by the Action on Armed Violence Network (2013/2014).

Professor Hamber is a board member of Healing Through Remembering (Northern Ireland) and Impunity Watch (Netherlands). He is on the Society Advisory Group of the British Council.

Dr Grainne Kelly

Lecturer

Dr Gráinne Kelly is a Lecturer in politics and peace and conflict studies in the School of Applied Social and Policy Sciences and is based within INCORE (International Conflict Research Institute).

Prior to joining Ulster University in 2008, Gráinne worked as a researcher in a range of civil society organisations including Democratic Dialogue (Northern Ireland’s first policy think tank) and the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland. She has also completed commissioned research for organisations including Save the Children UK, Mediation Northern Ireland, Belfast City Council and Healing through Remembering.

She holds an MA in Peace and Conflict Studies and PhD from Ulster University and was awarded an Emerging Leaders Fellowship at the Center for Civil Society and Philanthropy, City University New York (CUNY) in 2005 to conduct research on the role of community foundations in societies emerging from conflict.

Dr Kelly specialises in qualitative research and has undertaken extensive field work both in Northern Ireland and internationally, including Cambodia and Sierra Leone.  Her qualitative research (with Hamber) on reconciliation theories and practices in Northern Ireland was adopted and operationalised by the European Union in a major funding stream worth 1.5 billion euros, fundamentally transforming the way the Programme was managed from 2005-2013.

She was Principal Investigator on two grant awards (total £86,008) from the Equality Unit of the Northern Ireland Assembly to research priority areas for good relations policy and has presented widely on the topic in both policy and academic settings. Dr. Kelly was the research lead and co-investigator on a European Union PEACE III Programme grant (£948,509) to build a digital archive of oral histories related to the Northern Ireland conflict. She is a founding member of the Stories Network, a network hosted and chaired by Healing Through Remembering, for those gathering and sharing personal narratives related to the conflict and and about Northern Ireland.

Dr. Kelly is currently (February 2021) in receipt of a research grant from the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Irish Government to conduct qualitative research on the development of bottom-up indicators of reconciliation in Northern Ireland.

Dr Kelly’s work has been published in journals including International Peacekeeping, Journal of Human Rights Practice and International Journal for Conflict Resolution and Engagement.  She is a member of the ESRC Peer Review College.

Professor Kristian Lasslett

Professor

Kristian Lasslett is Professor of Criminology at Ulster University and sits on the Executive Board of the International State Crime Initiative. He is joint Editor-in-Chief of State Crime, a leading international peer reviewed journal, and co-founder of the investigative research centre, UzInvestigations. Kristian’s investigative research focuses on criminogenic intersections of state and corporate power, the transnational structures that facilitate elite criminality, and the communities of resistance that emerge in opposition.

This focus has been operationalised through fieldwork on the extractive industries in South-East Asia and Central Asia, in addition to investigative work on grand corruption, kleptocracy, asset recovery, land-grabbing and forced eviction. Kristian has published on a range of subjects in leading international journals and edited collections, including scientific method, state theory, investigative research methodologies, decolonial theory, state-corporate crime, corruption, and forced eviction.

His investigations into corruption and transnational crime have appeared in the BBC, The Guardian, Radio Free Europe, Open Democracy and Tages-Anzeiger. He is the producer of the feature documentary Ophir and project director of web-documentary series, The Colonial Syndrome. His first book State Crime on the Margins of Empire was published by Pluto Press in 2014. His second book, Uncovering The Crimes of Urbanisation, was published by Routledge in 2018.

Dr Brendan Lynn

Research Associate

Dr Brendan Lynn is currently a Research Associate with the Conflict Archive on the INternet project (CAIN).

A graduate of Ulster University, he has taught history at the same institution, Queen’s University Belfast and St Mary’s University College Belfast.

Before becoming a member of the CAIN team he worked on the Dictionary of Irish Biography and has also published on developments in nationalist politics in Northern Ireland since 1945.

Mike McCool

ICT Officer

Mike holds an honours degree in computer science and an MSc in Computing and Design.

Upon obtaining his first degree, Mike was employed as Research Assistant on the Ulysses Project from 1990-93 based at Magee.

He was then employed by the Faculty of Engineering as a Computer Officer and subsequently seconded to the Interactive Systems Centre (ISC from 1993-97 as Research Officer/ICT Manager on the TALENT Project at Magee.

From 1997 he was seconded to INCORE/ARK until 2007 when he was offered and accepted the permanent post of ICT Manager.

He has published over the years but his main roles consist of system administration (Unix), database administration, web site design/development, graphic/multimedia design, systems programming and providing general troubleshooting and support to his colleagues.

He is currently working on several projects for INCORE, ARK and CAIN.

Dr Martin Melaugh

Research Fellow

Dr Martin Melaugh is Director of CAIN (Conflict Archive on the Internet; cain.ulster.ac.uk), which is an associated project of INCORE and ARK (The Northern Ireland Social and Political Archive; www.ark.ac.uk).

Martin previously worked in the Centre for the Study of Conflict at Ulster University.

Professor Duncan Morrow

Director of Community Engagement

Duncan Morrow is a Lecturer in politics where he has published widely in the fields of conflict resolution, Northern Ireland politics and the relationship between religion and politics.

He is currently the Director of Community Engagement at Ulster University developing relationships with groups and organisations across the community.

His research interests include Conflict and Religion, Ethnic Conflict, Northern Ireland Politics and the work of Rene Girard.

Duncan’s recent publications include Reconciliation and After in Northern Ireland: The Search for a Political Order in an Ethnically Divided Society (in Ethnic Conflict and Nationalism (2017:1)), ‘Violence Unveiled’ (in Kirwan M and Hidden, S. ed ‘Mimesis and Atonement, Bloomsbury 2017), and Public Attitudes to Peace Walls in Northern Ireland (with J. Byrne and C. Gormley-Heenan (2016).

For ten years, Duncan was Chief Executive of the Northern Ireland Community Relations Council where he championed the concept of a shared future and peace-building by developing  the Council’s role in policy, in research and active learning, in organisations  and work on key issues such as interfaces, parading and regeneration and in work with victims and survivors of conflict. Between 2012 and 2015 he was Chair of the Scottish Government’s Advisory Group on Tackling Sectarianism and in 2016 chaired the Scottish Government’s Advisory Group on Tackling Hate Crime, Prejudice and Community Cohesion.

Professor Karl O'Connor

Research Director – Social Work and Social Policy, School of Applied Social and Policy Sciences

Karl O’Connor is Professor of Public Administration and Public Policy. He is the Research Director for Social Work and Social Policy (UoA20) in the School of Applied Social and Policy Sciences at Ulster University.

His research, within the Centre for Public Administration, examines the role of the civil servant in the management of multiethnic societies and in international development.

After completing a BA in Public Administration with French at the University of Limerick (Ireland) and a Masters in Public Policy and European Integration at The Queen’s University of Belfast, he completed his PhD at the University of Exeter where his research was awarded the Hutton Prize for excellence for its contribution to improving standards of governance in society.

He has a keen interest in Middle East and Central Asian studies and has been a visiting scholar at Nazarbayev University. He has previously held post-doctoral and lecturer positions at the University of Limerick and Glasgow Caledonian University.

Research

Karl’s research examines the motivations and role conceptions of civil servants in contested societies. This work has addressed key questions related to international development and conflict management. His research has examined the role of street level bureaucrats in managing ethnopolitical tensions, the role of elite level bureaucrats in Central Asia in pursuing development objectives within authoritarian regimes and has identified the role of the civil servant in Northern Ireland and Belgium in managing ethno-political tensions.

He has a keen interest in mixed methods, particularly Q Methodology.

His research has received funding from the British Academy, The British Council for Research in the Levant, the Department of Justice, the British Council, GCRF and the ESRC.

Karl has supervised PhD theses in the field of public administration, Education and public policy.

Teaching

Karl teaches on Ulster University’s prestigious Master of Public Administration programme that is delivered in close partnership with the Northern Ireland Civil Service. He teaches Policy Analysis and Applied Government. He is year one tutor for the programme and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Professor Gillian Robinson

Emeritus Professor and Research Associate ARK

Gillian Robinson is Professor of Social Research and Research Director of ARK at Ulster University. Based in the School of Applied Social and Policy Sciences and a member of the Psychology Research Institute, Gillian worked with colleagues to establish ARK as a cross-university resource (with Queen’s University Belfast) providing access to social and political information on Northern Ireland in 2000.  She has been involved in the monitoring of social attitudes in Northern Ireland since 1989 and co-directs the Northern Ireland Life and Times survey series. She leads the ARK Ageing Programme at Ulster University.

Recently Gillian co-ordinated the Accounts of the Conflict project, a digital archive of personal accounts of the conflict in and about Northern Ireland. This archive is a valuable new addition to the CAIN (Conflict Archive on the Internet cain.ulster.ac.uk ) web resource. Gillian has worked closely with INCORE (International Conflict Research Institute), where she was Director 2003-2008).

Her research interests include peace monitoring, social attitudes, gender roles, policy development in transition and research methodology including issues around researching violent societies and comparative methods.  She has published extensively on these issues including six books and numerous articles and has led teams that have developed over 40 online publicly accessible databases. She is the 2003 Eisenhower Fellow from Northern Ireland.