News
Department of Sociology & Criminology secure two North-South Initiative Research Grants
The projects are 'TOGETHER - collaborating across prison walks and borders' and 'Women of the Borderlands: A Walking Biographical Study of Women's Everyday Life on the UK/Irish Border'
An interdisciplinary team of researchers from University College Cork and Queens University Belfast have secured funding from the Shared Island North-South Research Programme for their collaborative project entitled ‘TOGETHER- collaborating across prison walls and borders’. The project builds on UCC’s ongoing education partnership with the Cork Education and Training Bord in Cork Prison and QUB’s partnership with HMP Hydebank Wood in Belfast. The collaborative cross-border research partnership is arising from the Irish Government’s Shared Island initiative, delivered by the Higher Education Authority (HEA) on behalf of the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research Innovation and Science (DFHERIS). The transdisciplinary project will run from 2022-2024 and will explore the impacts of the prison-university classroom and co-produce (with participating students) an all-island curriculum that could be used across Irish prisons, north and south. The TOGETHER team are Dr Katharina Swirak (UCC), Prof Shadd Maruna (QUB), Dr James Cronin (UCC) and Prof Maggie O’Neill (UCC).
Dr Theresa O'Keefe of the Department of Sociology and Criminology has been awarded funding (200K) under the Shared Island North-South Research Programme to investigate women's relationship with the border on the island of Ireland. This two-year project, 'Women of the Borderlands: A Walking Biographical Study of Women’s Everyday Life on the UK/Irish Border,' is a collaboration with Dr Niall Gilmartin at the University of Ulster and will use in-depth ‘walking interviews’ to explore how women's lives were shaped by living in communities along the UK/Irish border during the Troubles and since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. It endeavours to document the gendered impacts of border life and publicly archive untold stories of how women navigated the border as part of everyday life.