JOHN HUME VISITING RESEARCH FELLOW

The visiting Senior Research Fellow for the session 2009/10 is Professor Mary Hickman, Professor of Irish Studies and Sociology and Director of the Institute for the Study of European Transformations at London Metropolitan University. Her research interests include: migrations and diasporas; national (re)formations; relationships between class, religion and ethnic identitifications; analysis of ethnic and racial differentiations and discriminations; and comparative processes of integration/social cohesion. She was a member of the Irish Governments Task Force on Policy Regarding Emigrants (2001-2002) and has written extensively on Irish migration and diaspora.

Professor Hickman is working on a book, with two colleagues, Migration, Cohesion and Society (to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2011). She is director of a collaborative research project “The Construction and Representation of ‘Suspect Communities’ in multi-ethnic Britain 1974-2006: and their impact on Muslim communities and Irish communities” (funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council). During her stay at GII Professor Hickman will be writing up both pieces of research.

While at UCD Professor Hickman will engage with the PhD students and Post-Doctoral Fellows at GII; contribute to the Institute post graduate seminar programme; work with Dr Jim MacPherson in organizing a symposium on Irish women and diaspora in June 2010; and develop a project around second generation experiences and identifications in the context of the long-term settlement of recent migrants to Ireland.

PETROL BOMBER

Pictured above: “Petrol Bomber” (1994), by The Bogside Artists, The Peoples Gallery, Derry