Webinar: The Troubles and the Good Friday Agreement

Prof. Chris Reynolds – NTU
This webinar takes the case of Northern Ireland to discuss the challenge facing history teachers in post-conflict societies that continue to experience ongoing division and tension in relation to the past. Beginning with a brief overview of the historical context leading to the conflict commonly described as the “Troubles”, it will then outline how this period was experienced as well as its consequences. There then follows an examination of how peace was achieved with the 1998 Good Friday/ Belfast Agreement and how the past 25 years have seen great progress, despite the many challenges that have had to be overcome…many of which remain to this day. One of the most urgent and sensitive of these challenges relates to how the legacy of the past can be handled to ensure that it is no longer a source of tension with the capacity to undermine the future sustainability of peace. A central element in this debate is how the conflict is taught in local schools, and there will be a brief overview of how the teaching of the “Troubles” is handled in the contemporary education system in Northern Ireland. The webinar will then focus on a recent collaborative project with National Museums NI entitled Voices of ’68 that placed education at the core of its multi-facetted activities and suggests a potentially fruitful blueprint for how the legacy of the “Troubles” can be approached and taught more generally. The conclusion will provide other, recent, and ongoing examples of how the “Troubles” is being constructively and effectively taught, and it will be argued that there are lessons for the general issue of managing the legacy of the past in Northern Ireland. The webinar aims to encourage attendees to consider the applicability of the approaches presented to other post-conflict societies and the potential benefits of teaching the Northern Irish conflict as a rich and pertinent case study within their own contexts.

We will host this webinar on Tuesday 20 June at 16:30 (Amsterdam Time). Participation in the webinar is free of charge.

Voices of ’68 resources

• Digital exhibition
  https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/voices-of-68/id1401984783?ls=1&mt=11
• Educational resources
  https://www.nationalmuseumsni.org/resources/northern-irelands-1968
• NMNI YouTube channel
  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_UgxDN1Li8_0k73JfDTN3WSXJ4JCXMD_

Related Publications

• Reynolds, C. and Blair, W. (2023), ‘Dealing with the legacy of the past: oral history and museums in Northern Ireland’. Oral History. Vol 51. 1. pp. 114-127.
• Reynolds, C., (2023) ‘Agonistic remembering and Northern Ireland’s 1968 @ 50 in James McAuley, Máire Braniff, and Graham Spencer, ‘Troubles of the Past? history, identity and collective memory in Northern Ireland. (Manchester University Press).
• Reynolds, Chris and Morin, Paul Max. “Dealing with Contested Pasts from Northern Ireland to French Algeria: Transformative Strategies of Agonism in Action?”. Youth and Memory in Europe: Defining the Past, Shaping the Future, edited by Félix Krawatzek and Nina Friess, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2022, pp. 277-302.
• Reynolds, C. and Cento Bull, A. (2021) ‘Uses of oral history in museums: a tool for agonism and dissonance or promoting a linear narrative?’, Museum and Society, 19 (3), pp. 283-300.
• Reynolds, C. (2021) ‘The symbiosis of oral history and agonistic memory: Voices of 68 and the legacy of the past in Northern Ireland’, Journal of the British Academy, 9 (s3), pp. 73-94.
• Reynolds, C. (2021) ‘Recalibrating memories: The divergent afterlife of Northern Ireland’s 1968’ in Munro et. al., Global Revolutionary Aesthetics and Politics after Paris ’68 (Lexington Books, London).
• Reynolds, C., and Parr, C. 2020. ‘Protestant attitudes to Civil Rights’, Contemporary British History. DOI: 10.1080/13619462.2020.1785291
• Reynolds, C and Black, G, 2019. ‘Engaging Audiences with Difficult Pasts: The Voices of ’68 Project at the Ulster Museum, Belfast’, Curator. The Museum Journal. 17 November 2019.
• Reynolds, 2019. ‘Sobre el disputado pasado de Irlanda del Norte: 1968 y la memoria agonística’ in E. BAUTISTA NARANJO and C. DUÉE, eds., Mayo del 68, 50 años después. Madrid: Dykinson.
• Reynolds, C., and Blair., W., 2018, ‘‘Museums and ‘difficult pasts’: Northern Ireland’s 1968’, Museum International, Vol. 70, 3-4, pp. 12-25.
• Reynolds, C., ‘Beneath the Troubles, the Cobblestones: Recovering the “Buried” Memory of Northern Ireland’s 1968, The American Historical Review, Volume 123, Issue 3, 1 June 2018.
• Reynolds, C. and Blair, W., 2018. ‘Reframing Northern Ireland’s 1968 in a ‘post-conflict’ context.’ In: J. SAVIĆ, ed., Museums of cities and contested urban histories. CAMOC Annual Conference 2017, Mexico City, October 2017: book of proceedings. CAMOC: ICOM International Committee for Collections and Activities of Museums of Cities, pp. 212-222. ISBN 9789290124337
• Reynolds, C., ‘Enduring insularity and the memory of Northern Ireland’s 1968’ in Crooke, Elizabeth and Maguire, Thomas, Heritage after Conflict. Northern Ireland (Abingdon, Routledge, 2018), pp. 16-33.
• Reynolds, C., ‘Transnational Memories and Gender: Northern Ireland’s 1968’ in Colvin, Sarah and Karcher, Katharina, Women, Global Protest Movements, and Political Agency. Rethinking the Legacy of 1968 (Abingdon, Routledge, 2018).
• Reynolds, C. 2017. ‘Northern Ireland’s 1968 @ The Ulster Museum’, VIEW Journal of European Television History and Culture, 6(12), pp.41–54.
• Reynolds, C., ‘Northern Ireland’s 1968 in a post-Troubles context’, Interventions, Vol. 19, 5, 2017. pp. 631-645.
• Reynolds, C., Sous les pavés…The Troubles: France, Northern Ireland and the European Collective Memory of 1968. (Peter Lang, 2015).