Northern Ireland Extended Study Information Session
Tuesday, February 25, 2025 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Description
This extended study opportunity builds on the work done over the course of the Fall '25 semester in PCON 340 ('Terror/Counterterror: Histories and Logics of Asymmetric Warfare') by going to one of the most important sites of irregular warfare in the late twentieth century: Northern Ireland.This extended study engages with participants on various sides of this conflict, including former “terrorists, ” ex-members of loyalist “death squads, ” civilian victims, and witnesses to atrocities, as well as academics and peacebuilding practitioners who can help students make sense of this protracted internecine war. Locations visited include Dublin, Belfast, Derry, and a tour of the Irish border.With the emergence of The Troubles in the wake of the violent repression of Northern Ireland’s republican-nationalist civil rights movement in the late 1960s by Loyalist and British forces, this disputed territory descended into a spiral of terror and counterterror that lasted well into the 1990s. During this generation-spanning conflict, Northern Ireland became another key nexus of two entwined phenomena witnessed across the world during the Cold War: the use of irregular warfare (guerrilla tactics and terrorism) by revolutionary nonstate actors and the use of counterinsurgency and state terrorism by those forces seeking to repress such resistance. Though a peace agreement has been in place for over a quarter of a century now, the legacies of this conflict continue to reverberate within this polity.Pizza and drinks will be served.