Prof. Lee Smithey’s new book, Unionists, Loyalists, and Conflict Transformation in Northern Ireland, is now available from Oxford University Press. Lee is a faculty advisor for the Northern Ireland Semester and conducts much of his research in the region.

Drawing on almost twenty years of studying and traveling to Northern Ireland, including sustained periods of intensive fieldwork, Smithey focuses on the importance of collective identity change that is central to conflict transformation. He argues that it is important for ethnopolitical division to be addressed from within ideologically committed quarters of divided societies. In this case, he finds that many unionists and loyalists are modifying symbolic and often ritualistic expressions of collective identity that have often been considered divisive, such as parades, bonfires, and murals, and are making them less polarizing. The development and modification of these activities provide opportunities for the incremental reframing of fundamental ethnopolitical ideas and narratives. If you are interested in studying peace processes from grassroots psychocultural angles, this book might appeal to you.