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Events

The Centre is active in hosting regular events. These include lectures or other addresses by distinguished guest speakers from academia and the practitioner community, as well as book launches, plus conferences, both as sole organiser and in collaboration with colleagues in other institutions.

Forthcoming Conferences, Events and Guest Speakers
DateEvent
10 - 12 September 2025UKAPA Conference 2025 will be held at Ulster University, Belfast campus
Recent Conferences, Events and Guest Speakers
DateEvent
May 2025 In May 2025, Professor Paul Carmichael was invited by the Maison du Futur organisation to give a presentation at its event entitled ‘Overcoming Divisions: A Conference for Lebanon’s Future’. Organised in conjunction with the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Lebanon Office, and held in Bekfaya, near the capital city, Beirut, the conference aimed to seize the current renewed momentum for national dialogue in Lebanon, and bring local and international voices to explore sustainable pathway towards peace, stability and renewed national identity. Professor Carmichael spoke in the panel entitled ‘Remembering the Past, Imagining the Future’ on the experience of Northern Ireland. Maison du Futur was established by the former President of Lebanon, Amine Gemayel, who was present at the proceedings along with a range of other current and former senior leaders from across the political and religious spectrum in the country.
25 March 2025 Professor Paul Carmichael was invited by Dr Giada Lagana to give a lecture to students and staff with the School of Law and Politics at Cardiff University on 25 March 2025. The presentation was entitled ‘Borders, Brexit, breakaways and benefits amid the changing nature of the devolution settlement in Northern Ireland’. It considered how the arrangements established under the Good Friday Agreement had fared as a result of Brexit as well as other disruptions to the devolved government of Northern Ireland, while also considering the recent spate of calls for a referendum on reunification, in the longer context of the history of the island of Ireland. In contending that the evidence for organising such a poll remains insufficient, with the outcome unlikely to change the status quo, the lecture focussed instead on how ‘making Northern Ireland work better’ with pragmatic further cross-border cooperation were more fruitful avenues for local leaders to pursue. He noted how the reforms made in respect of fair employment and the continued nature of the financial settlement for Northern Ireland, provided a stable basis for a fairer and more inclusive society.
28-29 November 2024 Conference – ‘Reflections on a Changing Ireland and its Relationships’ (organised jointly with the Centre for Irish-German Studies at the University of Limerick Wilfreed Martens Centre for European Studies and the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) UK & Ireland office), and to be held at Ulster University.
4 October 2024 Visit by Dr Sara Dybris McQuaid, Associate Professor in British-Irish History, Society & Culture, Aarhus University, Denmark.  Lecture entitled - Administrations of Memory and the Politics of Northern Ireland 1994-2024.
19 September 2024 Visit by  Professor Hiroyuki Ogawa, Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies & British Studies Section, Department of Area Studies and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Japan.  Lecture entitled - The Irish Question from the perspectives of Japanese Intellectuals and Politicians from the late 19th to early 20th Centuries.
18 September 2024 Visit by Dr Mansour Nasasra, Senior Lecturer in Middle East Politics and International Relations, Department of Politics and Government, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel.
Lecture entitled - Jerusalem since the Jordanian Rule and the Oslo Peace Accords.
14 March 2024 Book Launch – Book entitled The Routledge Handbook of Language Policy and Planning. Editors – Michele Gazzola (Ulster University), François Grin (Université de Genève), Linda Cardinal (Université de l'Ontario français) and Kathleen Heugh (University of South Australia). Discussant, Iker Erdocia (Dublin City University). Moderator: Nicole Marinaro (Ulster University).
13 December 2023 Visit by Dr Jane Morrice, former journalist, MLA, Deputy Speaker, Northern Ireland Assembly. Lecture entitled - The role of USA & EU in the Northern Ireland Peace Process - different means to the same end.
16-17 November 2023 Conference - ‘Engaging Cross Borders: Perspectives from Ireland and Europe’ (organised jointly with the Centre for Irish-German Studies at the University of Limerick Wilfreed Martens Centre for European Studies and the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) UK & Ireland office), and held at the University of Limerick as the 20th International Conference in Irish-German Studies),
18 October 2023 Visit by Nina Teigland, University of Bergen. Lecture entitled - Language Policy and the Public Administration in Norway: Issues and Challenges.
13-15 September 2023 Conference - 39th Annual ‘International Society for the Study of Subjectivity’ (ISSSS) conference (known by its more familiar term of Q Methodology),
9 March 2023 Visit by H.E. Piotr Wilczek, the Ambassador of Poland to the United Kingdom. Lecture entitled Polish diplomacy: the case of relations with the United States and the United Kingdom (event co-organised with Professor Jan Jedrzejewski).
3-4 November 2022 Conference - ‘New Ways of Engagement and the International Context: Northern Ireland and Ireland’ (organised jointly with the Centre for Irish-German Studies at the University of Limerick and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) UK and Ireland office), and held at Clifton House and Ulster University Belfast.
2 November 2022 Visit by Professor Luc Turgeon, University of Ottowa, Canada. Lecture entitled – ‘The Politics of Representative Bureaucracy in Multilingual Public Administrations’.
4-5 November 2021 Conference - ‘Unions, Break-ups and Special Relationships – Aspects of the Irish-German-UK Relationships’ (organised jointly with the Centre for Irish-German Studies at the University of Limerick and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) UK and Ireland office), and held at the University of Limerick as the 18th International Conference in Irish-German Studies)
26-27 July 2021

Nitobe Symposium – ‘Language, Conflict, and Security’ organised jointly with Centre for Research and Documentation on World Language Problems (CED) with financial support of the Esperantic Studies Foundation.