The Relevance of the Event
A conference that also marks the 20th anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, convening policy - makers, academics and peace practitioners to share reflections and unique experiences on building effective, inclusive and sustainable peace in Northern Ireland.
The 23 June 2016 referendum on the UK’s continuing membership of the EU, with its potential as a watershed moment in the history of NI, marked a turning point in the history of relations between the region and the EU. Most importantly,
Brexit brought the topic to the centre of current political and scholarly debates, with academics questioning the profound implications that the UK decision to leave the EU could potentially have for NI and the island of Ireland as a whole. If Brexit today threatens the EU’s economic and political support for the NI peace process, it is now crucial to question when and why this Europeanisation started, and who were the key actors enacting it both at the national and at the European level. Five of these key-actors will take part to this symposium.
The Speakers
Dr Brendan Flynn
College Lecturer, National University of Ireland Galway. He has studied at the University of Essex for his Masters and PhD degrees, his doctoral thesis having the title: "Subsidiarity and the Evolution of EU environmental policy", with Prof. Albert Weale, as his supervisor. His primary research interests include comparative environmental policy, with a special focus on EU and Irish developments. He also retains an interest in wider EU policy and European politics developments. Hugh Logue
Former European Commission official joining 1984. Former Civil rights leader , member of N. Ireland Civil Rights Executive and Vice chairman of N.Derry Civil Rights Association. Founder member of SDLP and elected to Stormont Assembly for SDLP in 1973, 1975 and 1981. Following the 1994 ceasefire , Logue, along with two colleagues was asked by Eu President Delors to consult all parties in N.Ireland and their recommendations became the blue print for the first EU Peace Programme. In 1997, new EU President Santer asked Logue and his team to return and advise on a renewed Peace II programme. Following the Good Friday Agreement ,Logue was seconded from EU to N .Ireland as Special Advisor to First and Deputy First Minister from 1998 to 2002. He was an InterTradeIreland board member 2008-2011. Dr Niall O'Dochartaigh
Senior Lecturer in the School of Political Science and Sociology, National University of Ireland Galway. He started out as historian and his current and he has published extensively on back channel communication in the Northern Ireland conflict and is currently completing a monograph on the topic. Niall's other research interests are in conflict and territoriality, conflict and new technologies and attempts to moderate or resolve conflict. At NUI Galway he is also the cluster leader for the Conflict, Humanitarianism and Security research cluster in the Whitaker Institute and Chair of the Research Committee in the School of Political Science and Sociology. He is also founding convener of the ECPR Standing Group on Political Violence and co-convener of the Political Studies Association of Ireland Specialist Group on Peace and Conflict. |
Dr Katy Hayward
Reader in Sociology at Queen’s University Belfast and Senior Research Fellow at the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice. She has over twenty years' research experience on the topic of the EU and Ireland/N.Ireland. She is the author of over 100 publications, including most recently a report for the European Parliament's Committee on Constitutional Affairs: UK Withdrawal and the Good Friday Agreement (2017, with David Phinnemore). She has presented widely on the topic of Brexit and has given evidence on this before parliamentary committees in both the UK and Ireland. Outside the University, she is a Board Member of the Centre for Cross Border Studies, the Institute for Conflict Research and Conciliation Resources. Jane Morrice
Honorary president of the European Movement Northern Ireland and former politician in Northern Ireland, Jane was a prominent member of the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition. She was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in June 1998 and was appointed as Deputy Speaker in February 2000. She was involved in the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement and was a member of the Standing Orders Committee which set the initial rules governing Assembly procedures post-devolution. She was also a member of the Assembly's Trade and Industry Committee and the Public Accounts Committee. In 1992, Jane was appointed Head of the European Commission (EC) Office in Northern Ireland, representing the EC for five years. She took a particular interest in the establishment of the Special EU Programme for Peace and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland. Andy Pollak
Founding Director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies in Armagh (1999-2013), he was also Secretary of the all-island university presidents' body, Universities Ireland, and the all-island teacher education body, SCoTENS (Standing Conference on Teacher Education North and South). Before that he was Belfast reporter, religious affairs correspondent, education correspondent and assistant news editor with the Irish Times (1981-1999). In 1992-1993 he was coodinator of the Opsahl Commission, an independent inquiry into ways forward for Northern Ireland, and editor of its report 'A Citizens' Inquiry: the Opsahl Report on Northern Ireland' (Lilliput, 1993). He was the co-author (with Ed Moloney) of 'Paisley' (Poolbeg, 1986). He is a board member of the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation in County Wicklow and blogs at www.2irelands2gether.com |
Colm Larkin
A senior official of the European Commission from 1974-2004, working as Deputy Chef de Cabinet to Commissioner Peter Sutherland and as Chef de Cabinet to Commissioner Ray Mc Sharry. He was Director of the Commission Representation to Ireland from 1993-1998 and special advisor in the Office of First and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland from 1998-2001. From 2010 to 2015 he headed the EU Policy and Coordination Unit in the Central Bank of Ireland and is currently studying for a degree in Irish in University College Dublin. Dr Mary C. Murphy
Lecturer in politics at University College Cork, Mary holds a Jean Monnet Chair in European Integration and is a Fulbright Scholar awardee. She specializes in the study of the EU and Northern Ireland politics and recently published 'Europe and Northern Ireland’s Future: Negotiating Brexit’s Unique Case' (Agenda Publishing 2018). Mary is also involved in a three-year ESRC funded project 'Between Two Unions: The Constitutional Future of the Islands after Brexit'. Carlo Trojan
Carlo Trojan became Chief of Staff of Frans Andriessen, Vice-President of the European Commission dealing successfully with Competition Policy and Agriculture. In 1987 he was appointed Deputy Secretary General of the European Commission to become Secretary General in 1997. In that time he handled some of the most delicate budget negotiations, not least of which was his success as head of a Delors task force on German unification in brokering a £2.5 billion package to ease the transition. In 1989 Trojan was appointed by Delors to represent the Commission on the board of the International Fund for Ireland and he became, in 1994, Head of the 1994 Northern Ireland Task Force Tom Arnold is the current chair of the All Island Civic Dialogue on Brexit. He has been Director General of the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA), Director of the Scaling up Nutrition (SUN) Movement, Chairman of the Irish Constitutional Convention, and Chief Executive of Concern Worldwide (2001-13). He worked for the Department of Agriculture and Food, serving as Assistant Secretary General and Chief Economist and with the European Commission, in the directorates general of agriculture and of development, in Brussels and in Africa. He has been a member of a number of bodies at national, European and international level, mainly dealing with food and nutrition. He was Chairman of the Irish Times Trust, a member of the Irish Times Board, and is a member of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA).
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