The Northern Ireland Troubles in Britain

Today I gave a  keynote address at the "The Northern Ireland Troubles in Britain: Impacts, Engagements, Legacies and Memories" Conference, 11–13 July 2012. The conference was an inter-disciplinary conference hosted by the Centre for Research in Memory Narrative and Histories at the University of Brighton. The conference sought to explore the impacts and lasting effects of the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ in Britain and responses to the conflict from Britain. More details on the conference are here.

My paper will be entitled 'Symptomatic treatment: The challenge of policy and practice interventions aimed at assisting victims of the confict in and about Northern Ireland'.

I am still finalising my paper but here are some tweets from the day to give you a little flavour.

@JoDoverWork 9:14am Preparing to chair a session at the Brighton conference with @BrandonHamber about policy & practice for assisting victims of the 'Troubles'

@BrandonHamber 11:39am My paper at Brighton conference entitled "Symptomatic Treatment" argues we are medicalising how we look at victims of the conflict

@BrandonHamber 11:41am We also need link in truth, justice and reparation, and describe the context now and then, to deal with the full range of needs

@BrandonHamber 11:42am What victim voices are we silencing or rewarding in peace process Northern Ireland, is there social space for people to still be angry?

@BrandonHamber 11:44am Victim healing comes not only in the therapy room but how they negotiate victims place in society and acknowledge what has happened

@BrandonHamber 11:45am There is an onus on political leadership to create a framework to talk about the past in Britain and Northern Ireland

@BrandonHamber 12:00pm Good response to my talk. I'm working on the final paper. But many of the ideas in my book "Transforming Societies" ow.ly/1OgxPr