building pathways out of violence

Marie Breen-Smyth the Company Secretary of IPER and field worker. She is Professor Emerita and former Associate Dean at the University of Surrey. She was Independent Reviewer of National Security Arrangements for Northern Ireland and Independent Reviewer of the Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act 2007 from 2021-4. She taught at University of Mass Boston, Aberystwyth University, Smith College and Elms College in Massachusetts, Singidunum University in Serbia and the University of Ulster. She was 2002-3 Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington DC.  Her research has focussed on conflicts in Northern Ireland, the Middle East, Southern and West Africa and she has consulted in Macedonia, Pakistan, and Israel Palestine. She founded the Institute for Conflict Research in Belfast in 1996 and conducted the first comprehensive research on the impact of the Troubles on the population of Northern Ireland. She has researched and published on human security, victim politics, the impact of armed conflict, the role of children in conflict in the US and Northern Ireland, transitional justice, and post-conflict reconstruction.  She is a founder editor of the Taylor and Francis journal, Critical Studies on Terrorism. Her practitioner experience includes working as a community organizer in North Belfast during the conflict in Northern Ireland, as a licensed mental health clinician in Massachusetts, USA, helping establish the criminal justice inspection in Northern Ireland, integrating community restorative justice into the state system, and organising field missions and reports for the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations on Children and Armed Conflict on the issue of the recruitment of children into armed groups. She was given a Distinguished Scholar Award (Peace) by the International Studies Association in 2021. 

Katherine Fynes is IPER's intern and a native of Washington, D.C.  In 2017, Katherine served as a Senate Page for the 115th United States Congress, and in 2018 she returned to the U.S. Senate to work as an intern for her senior project, following her time shadowing at the United States State Department. During her time in secondary school, Katherine  became involved with her school’s United Nations Girl Up! Club, and served as Vice President in her final year. She was designated as a Global Scholar upon her graduation, following her participation in global affairs classes, a trip to India to study the effects of globalization through service learning and workshops, and her senior project, which she presented with a focus on the Sustainable Development Goals.

As an undergraduate at the University of Notre Dame, Katherine was a member of the College of Arts and Letters, as well as the Keough School of Global Affairs, where she picked up a supplementary major in Global Affairs, and chose to concentrate in Peace Studies in conjunction with the Kroc Institute. It was during this time that she developed an affinity for peace mediation, and for her Peace Studies Senior Capstone she wrote about the inclusion and efficacy of women in peace mediation and diplomacy, including sections about the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, and the work that they did on the Good Friday Agreement during the Troubles. Katherine also chose to focus on forced migration and refugee issues during her undergraduate, and spent time volunteering with refugee girls from Afghanistan, both in the Washington D.C. area and in South Bend, Indiana.

In her time since graduation, she has worked as a researcher for Notre Dame in the Republic of Ireland.

If you would like IPER to come to your organisation and talk about the work on paramilitary transition please contact us. We will be delighted to give a talk or just come and have a chat. 

We believe in open and respectful discussion and dialogue about difficult issues. We will organise a series of events addressing challenging issues. If you would like to be added to our mailing list sign up below. 

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Nomfundo Walaza  is a clinical psychologist who has worked as an activist in the human rights field for more than three decades. She served as the CEO of the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre (DTPC) for 7 years. She also served for 11 years as the Executive Director of the Trauma Centre for Survivors of Violence and Torture in Cape Town. In this capacity, Nomfundo focused primarily on the empowerment and the healing of victims of torture, trauma and violence, many of whom suffered severely at the hands of the Apartheid regime in South Africa. She also served the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa in multiple roles. 

Since leaving the DTPC, Nomfundo Walaza has been deeply involved in mediation, conflict transformation, dialogue facilitation, peacebuilding and assisting academic institutions with engaging in difficult conversation around issues of transformation and decolonization – conversations that were sparked by students protest of 2015-2017.  

Nomfundo co-founded the Unyoke Foundation with Chris Spies in 2017. She co-facilitates unyoke reflective retreats for international peace practitioners. She is dedicated to finding MikAfrican continent. Nomfundo has a keen interest in exploring African Indigenous Knowledge systems as they pertain to peacebuilding, mediation, conflict transformation and understanding mental health. She firmly believes that intergenerational accompaniment and support of local practitioners is crucial in addressing Africa’s intractable conflicts.

Darren Kew, Ph.D. is the newly appointed Dean of the Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego. Darren holds a Ph.D. from Tufts University and has a wealth of experience and expertise in peacebuilding, conflict resolution, and international relations. He is a professor and former Chair of the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance, and Executive Director of the Center for Peace, Democracy, and Development at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Darren has advised democracy and peace initiatives to the United Nations, USAID, US State Department, and several NGOs, including the Carter Center and the Nobel Peace Prize-nominated Interfaith Mediation Centre in Kaduna, Nigeria. Professor Kew's work focuses on the relationship between conflict resolution methods and democratic development in Africa, particularly in Nigeria. His research interests include civil society, international security, culture, religion, and nation-building. He also recently been doing comparative research in Northern Ireland on a Fulbright award at Queens University, Belfast. Professor Kew tweets – or whatever it is called on X – at @DarrenKew. 

Sylvia Gordon graduated from Queen’s University Belfast in 1995 with a bachelor's degree in Geography. She began working in the voluntary sector in 1996, working with grassroots organisations, preparing the ground leading up to the Belfast / Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Sylvia joined Groundwork NI in 2001 as Development Manager. She led on the development of the methodology and practice of using environmental regeneration as a peace building tool to explore contested space in interface communities and in areas across Northern Ireland. By the time Sylvia left Groundwork NI in 2015 she had been CEO for 8 years and in that time had taken part in negotiating parades, flags and the removal of paramilitary murals. Sylvia led a team of practitioners working alongside local community activists to negotiate the removal of several interface barriers in North Belfast.

Sylvia Gordon is now the Head of Programme for the Corrymeela Community, Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation centre founded in 1965.  Sylvia works alongside members, volunteers and staff developing programmes of work through the lens of legacy, ritual, moving beyond violence and trauma-informed programmes with asylum seekers and refugees.

At the heart of all Sylvia’s work is the relational model of building trust and nurturing hope. She has been part of many difficult and challenging discussions and negotiations, leading by example and building relations across sectarian divides.

Sylvia is also Chair of Women’s Tec – a not-for-profit organisation – the largest quality provider of training for women in non-traditional skills.

From the early days of the Troubles in the 70s Felicity McCartney was a community worker with the Centre for Neighbourhood Development when it was based in Frederick Street Meeting’s Institute building where we will meet on 19th. The building - and the Quakers in Belfast - have a long history of community work and activism in which Felicity played - and plays - a key part in recent times. In August 1969, women and children whose homes in North and West Belfast had been firebombed, sheltered in the Meeting House. This was the first of a multi-level response by Quakers, in Belfast and throughout Ireland, during the Troubles. The web of connections and practical service that had been developed during the Famine, and the level of trust built up at that time, was a foundation for the response to a different crisis, a century later. Felicity has worked for 14 years with Community Foundation for Northern Ireland in various roles including as Programme Manager for EU Peace II which included the measure for ex-prisoners and the measure for victims of the Troubles. In that role she developed a deep knowledge of both former combatant issues and the issues facing victims of the Troubles. Felicity has also served on  the committee of Quaker House Belfast including 3 years as chair, where she dealt with a wide range of peace and justice issues, working alongside the Quaker Service whose pioneering work in the prisons since the early days of internment is without parallel. By now, Felicity’s knowledge of and interest in paramilitary groups is well established.  Felicity is co-editor of Coming from the Silence: Quaker Peacebuilding Initiatives in Northern Ireland 1969-2005 (Sessions of York, 2009).

Roger Mac Ginty  is a Professor in the School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University. Roger works on peace and conflict, particularly on the intersection between top-down and bottom-up approaches to peacemaking. He is interested in everyday peace and the different ways in which this might be captured. He co-directs the Everyday Peace Indicators project (with Pamina Firchow) and edits the Taylor and Francis journal Peacebuilding (with Oliver Richmond). He also edits the "Rethinking Political Violence" book series. Roger has conducted extensive fieldwork and his research has been funded by the EU, ESRC and Carnegie Corporation of New York and others. His latest book, Everyday Peace: How so-called ordinary people can disrupt violent conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2021) won the 2020-2022 Ernst-Otto Czempiel Award for best book on peace 2020-2022.  

Revd Canon Tracey McRoberts has been Rector of St Matthew’s in the Shankill area of Belfast since 2012 and Rural Dean of Mid-Belfast since 2018 working with congregations in the Shankill, Ballysillan, Ardoyne, Ligoniel, Whiterock and Glencairn areas of the city.  St Matthew’s church is well-known for being built in the shape of a shamrock.  Canon Tracey studied theology at Union College before completing a PGCE at QUB and a Masters in Leadership and Pastoral Care at All Hallows College in Dublin. Initially working in the Presbyterian Church she was ordained for the Church of Ireland in 2009 and has served in parishes in Newtownards and north, south, east and west Belfast. She was appointed a Canon of St Anne’s Cathedral in 2023 and is chaplain to Scouting in North West Belfast and of the 1st Belfast Branch of the Royal Irish Rangers Old Comrades Association. Canon Tracey has been involved in a number of community and peace initiatives and facilitates peace-building among churches across the Falls and Shankill.  She was awarded the MBE in the King’s Birthday Honours of 2023 for services to the community in Belfast.