Niall Gilmartin – författare

This book stems from a simple ‘feminist curiosity’ that can be succinctly summed up into a single question: what happens to combatant women after the war? Based on in-depth interviews with 40 research participants, mostly former combatants within the Irish Republican Army (IRA), this book offers a critical exploration of republican women and conflict transition in the North of Ireland.Drawing on the feminist theory of a continuum of violence, this book finds that the dichotomous separation of war and peace within conventional approaches represents a gendered fiction. Despite undertaking wartime roles that were empowering, agentic, and subversive, this book finds that the ‘post-conflict moment’ as experienced by female combatants represents not peace and security, but a continuity of gender discrimination, violence, injustice, and insecurity. The experiences and perspectives contained in this book challenge the discursive deployment of terms such as post-conflict, peace, and security, and moreover, shed light on the many forms of post-war activism undertaken by combatant women in pursuit of peace, equality, and security. The book represents an important intervention in the field of gender, political violence, and peace, and more specifically, female combatants and conflict transition. It is analytically significant in its exploration of the ways in which gender operates within non-state military movements emerging from conflict, and will be of interest to students and scholars alike.

This book stems from a simple ‘feminist curiosity’ that can be succinctly summed up into a single question: what happens to combatant women after the war? Based on in-depth interviews with 40 research participants, mostly former combatants within the Irish Republican Army (IRA), this book offers a critical exploration of republican women and conflict transition in the North of Ireland.Drawing on the feminist theory of a continuum of violence, this book finds that the dichotomous separation of war and peace within conventional approaches represents a gendered fiction. Despite undertaking wartime roles that were empowering, agentic, and subversive, this book finds that the ‘post-conflict moment’ as experienced by female combatants represents not peace and security, but a continuity of gender discrimination, violence, injustice, and insecurity. The experiences and perspectives contained in this book challenge the discursive deployment of terms such as post-conflict, peace, and security, and moreover, shed light on the many forms of post-war activism undertaken by combatant women in pursuit of peace, equality, and security. The book represents an important intervention in the field of gender, political violence, and peace, and more specifically, female combatants and conflict transition. It is analytically significant in its exploration of the ways in which gender operates within non-state military movements emerging from conflict, and will be of interest to students and scholars alike.

The Good Friday Agreement is widely celebrated as a political success story, one that has brought peace to a region that was once synonymous around the globe with political violence. The truth, as ever, is rather more complicated than that.In many respects, the era of the peace process has seen Northern Irish society change almost beyond recognition. Those incidents of politically motivated violence that were once commonplace have become thankfully rare and a new generation has emerged whose identities and interests are rather more fluid and cosmopolitan than those of their predecessors. However, Northern Ireland continues to operate in the long shadow of its own turbulent past. Those who were victims of violence, as well as those who were its agents, have often been consigned to the margins of a society still struggling to cope with the traumas of the Troubles. Furthermore, the transition to ‘peace’ has revealed the existence of new, and not so new, forms of violence in Northern Irish society, directed towards women, ethnic minorities and the poor.Northern Ireland a generation after Good Friday sets out to capture the complex, and often contradictory, realities that have emerged more than two decades on from the region’s vaunted peace deal. Across nine original essays, the authors offer a critical and comprehensive reading of a society that often appears to have left its violent past behind but at the same time remains subject to its gravitational pull.

The Good Friday Agreement is widely celebrated as a political success story, one that has brought peace to a region that was once synonymous around the globe with political violence. The truth, as ever, is rather more complicated than that.In many respects, the era of the peace process has seen Northern Irish society change almost beyond recognition. Those incidents of politically motivated violence that were once commonplace have become thankfully rare and a new generation has emerged whose identities and interests are rather more fluid and cosmopolitan than those of their predecessors. However, Northern Ireland continues to operate in the long shadow of its own turbulent past. Those who were victims of violence, as well as those who were its agents, have often been consigned to the margins of a society still struggling to cope with the traumas of the Troubles. Furthermore, the transition to ‘peace’ has revealed the existence of new, and not so new, forms of violence in Northern Irish society, directed towards women, ethnic minorities and the poor.Northern Ireland a generation after Good Friday sets out to capture the complex, and often contradictory, realities that have emerged more than two decades on from the region’s vaunted peace deal. Across nine original essays, the authors offer a critical and comprehensive reading of a society that often appears to have left its violent past behind but at the same time remains subject to its gravitational pull.

Though forced displacement constituted a central and pervasive feature of the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ effecting tens of thousands of citizens, remarkably it has been afforded little more than a footnote or fleeting reference in most accounts of the conflict. This book seeks to ‘end the silence’ surrounding this neglected and ubiquitous aspect of the conflict. Based on 88 in-depth qualitative interviews with victims and survivors, and extensive secondary research, this fascinating study provides the first comprehensive examination of forced displacement in Northern Ireland. The analysis presented captures the unique perspectives of those forcibly uprooted over the course of the 30-year conflict and places on historical record their stories and experiences. This thought-provoking work challenges and broadens prevailing understandings of conflict-related violence, harm, and loss in Northern Ireland to demonstrate the centrality of forced movement, territory, and demographics to the roots and subsequent trajectory of the Troubles. In doing so, it shows that to fully understand the eruption and outplaying of the Troubles and its elusive peace, engagement with and understanding of the legacy of forced displacement is crucial.