IPER's Field team

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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.