Research at Incore

While grounded in the lived experience of conflict and peacebuilding in Northern Ireland, INCORE operates within a global and comparative frame, positioning local research within wider global debates. Our research spans Europe, Latin America, Africa, Central and South Asia, and the Middle East, enabling cross-regional dialogue and methodological innovation. It also aligns strongly with UKRI strategic priorities around democratic resilience, global security, equality, and inclusive societies. Our research is organised around six interlocking research areas. Together, they move from the structural roots of violence, through its lived and embodied experience, its artistic and cultural expressions, to the possibilities of justice, transformation, and sustainable peace.

Across all areas/groups, INCORE demonstrates:

• Strong interdisciplinary collaboration
• Inclusive and participatory research practices
• Commitment to EDI and inclusive research cultures
• Ethical research practice in conflict-affected contexts
• Support for doctoral and early career researchers
• Active engagement with civil society, cultural institutions, and policymakers

You can access INCORE's fellows' publications through this link to the University's PURE portal.

1. Storytelling, Oral History, and Memory

Violence does not end when agreements are signed. It endures in archives, landscapes, bodies, commemorations, and political discourse. This research group focuses on the historical and mnemonic afterlives of conflict, and examines how conflicts are remembered, narrated, archived, and reinterpreted across time. We investigate oral history, memorialisation, trauma politics, and the complex temporal dynamics of so-called “post-conflict” societies. Our work critically engages with archives, including digital and community-based collections such as the CAIN Archive, and interrogates how historical interpretation shapes contemporary political identities. By connecting work on Ireland and Northern Ireland with comparative research on Latin America, South Asia, Africa, and beyond, this research group positions memory not as retrospective reflection but as an active political force shaping present and future peace.

Key contributions include:

• Methodological innovation in community-based and digital archiving
• Critical interrogation of “post-conflict” temporal frameworks
• Interdisciplinary work connecting history, psychology, arts, urban studies, memory studies, and so on
• Comparative research linking Ireland/Northern Ireland with Latin America, South Asia, Middle East, and Africa

2. Arts, Culture, and Heritage

Conflict is not only material; it is also imagined, felt, sensed, and spatially organised. This research group explores how violence and peace, and the aftermaths of violent conflicts, are shaped and produced through arts, culture, creativity, space, imagination, and affect. Urban space, theatre, photography, and cultural production are central to understanding how societies live with the afterlives of violence. This research strand examines art, culture, heritage politics, and creativity as reflective practice. For instance, it asks: What is the role of Textile Language when words are not enough to express the lived experience of war & conflict? By analysing how social imaginaries of violence and peace circulate through arts, culture, and everyday life, we deepen our understanding of how identities and antagonisms are formed, and how they might be transformed. This research group connects aesthetic practice with political analysis, demonstrating how creative and spatial interventions can open new possibilities for dialogue and reconciliation.

By combining cultural theory, spatial analysis, and creative practice research, this research strand:

• Advances innovative interdisciplinary methodologies, bringing together different fields of study such as cultural theory, visual and performative arts, spatial politics, affect studies, and so on
• Engages cultural institutions and heritage sectors in co-production of knowledge
• Produces impact beyond academia through exhibitions, performance, and public programming

3. Gender, Bodies, and Feminist Peace Research

Conflict and violence are deeply gendered. Power operates through masculinities, femininities, sexualities, and embodied identities. This research strand develops cutting-edge feminist and intersectional approaches to peace and conflict research. For instance, we examine militarised gender identities, civilian agency, SOGI politics, gender-based violence, embodiment, and the role of feminist movements in the aftermath of violent conflicts and in contexts of backlash and authoritarian resurgence. Our work addresses gender budgeting, equality frameworks, and the structural conditions that shape gendered insecurity. By foregrounding bodies, embodiment, and lived experience, we move beyond institutional accounts of peace processes to reveal how violence and peace are differently experienced and enacted. This research area positions INCORE at the forefront of feminist and intersectional peace research.

Distinctive contributions of this research strand include:

• Analysis of militarised masculinities and queer identities in conflict
• Feminist critiques of transitional justice, peacebuilding, and peace processes
• Research on gender budgeting and structural equality
• Examination of backlash politics and authoritarian gender regimes
• Contribution to the “body turn” in international studies

4. Education, Youth, and Peacebuilding

This research strand examines the intersections of youth, education, and peace in contexts of conflict and political violence. We investigate the conditions under which young people are mobilised into armed groups, as well as their roles as agents of peacebuilding and social transformation. Our work also explores how education systems, both formal and informal, shape trajectories of recruitment, resilience, and reconciliation. We pay particular attention to the role of early childhood education in fostering peace, social cohesion, and preventing cycles of violence. This research group also analyses education governance in areas controlled by non-state actors and armed movements. By centring the experiences of children and young people, we assess the long-term impacts of conflict and violence on their lives, rights, and futures. Through interdisciplinary and policy-engaged research, we develop theoretically grounded and empirically rich research on education and youth engagement in conflict-affected contexts.

The work conducted in this research group notably helps:

• Reframing youth in conflict settings, by moving beyond binary portrayals of young people as either victims or perpetrators, conceptualising children and youth as social and political actors embedded in structures of power, inequality, and governance
• Linking education to political order and armed governance
• Illuminating long-term and intergenerational impacts of conflict and violence
• Studying the role of education systems and non-state actors in conflict transformation

5. Community-led, Participatory, and Bottom-up Approaches to Peacebuilding 

How do societies move from violence toward sustainable peace? This research area explores the mechanisms, practices, and ethical foundations of peacebuilding, conflict transformation, and transformative justice from a community-led, bottom-up angle. Our work addresses participatory democracy, community-based and indigenous peace initiatives, psychosocial dimensions of transitional justice, migrant community development, and the role of non-state actors in governance. A central concern is agency and knowledge production: who participates in peacebuilding, whose voices are heard, and how inclusive processes can challenge entrenched hierarchies. By linking theory with practice, and local initiatives with global debates, this strand of research develops innovative models of participatory and transformative peace. This research area also offers strong pathways to impact through collaboration with policymakers, NGOs, education providers, and community organisations.

Our work:

• Examines inclusive and participatory peacebuilding practices
• Advances interdisciplinary approaches to conflict transformation, mixing sociology, political science, psychology, law, history, and area studies
• Analyses the psychosocial dimensions of transitional justice
• Investigates indigenous and community-based peacebuilding practices

6. Systemic Approaches to Violence, Power, and Inequality

This research strand interrogates the deep and entangled political, institutional, economic, racial, colonial, cultural, and social forces that generate and sustain violence. We explore colonial legacies, decolonisation, racism, sectarianism, ethnicity, forced migrant labour, economic marginalisation, diaspora politics, and minority rights. Our research also engages with emerging forms of power and organised violence by State and non-State actors, and with the role of technology, AI, and security networks therein. By integrating political economy, postcolonial analysis, and social justice frameworks, and by connecting local conflict dynamics to global geopolitical shifts, this research strand shifts attention from episodic violence to systemic harm. It provides a critical foundation for understanding both historical and contemporary conflicts across regions, including Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Latin America.

By engaging in an integrated exploration of the entangled and co-constructed sources of violence, we shift the analytical focus from episodic violence to systemic injustice. Our work contributes to urgent debates around:

• Reducing inequalities, fighting racism and sectarianism, and building inclusive societies
• Exploring the structural drivers and lived effects of inequality, racism, colonialism, and economic marginalisation in “conflict contexts”
• Foregrounding interdisciplinary approaches to violence, bringing together sociology, political theory, postcolonial theory, social policy, political economy, critical security studies, history, political science, and international relations
• Understanding emerging forms of conflict and violence, global authoritarianism, democratic fragility, and democratic resilience

An integrated research architecture

These six research areas are not silos. They intersect and reinforce one another. For instance:

• Gendered power informs peacebuilding and memory politics.
• Cultural imaginaries sustain or challenge structural violence.
• Historical interpretation influences contemporary constitutional and democratic change.

Together, they form a comprehensive framework for analysing conflict from its deep structural roots to its lived experience and transformative possibilities.