Professor launches research project to capture memories of Irish Troubles

Caroline Magennis, Professor of Contemporary Irish Literature, is the project lead on Felt Memory: The Troubles and the Peace Process among the Irish in Britain. The project aims to explore how the conflict is felt, remembered and passed down today amongst those of Irish and Northern Irish heritage living in Britain.

Professor Magennis is a notable scholar on the literature of this period and is the author of the prize-winning Northern Irish Writing After the Troubles: Intimacies, Affects, Pleasures (Bloomsbury, 2021) and the former Chair of the British Association for Irish Studies.

For this project, she will be working alongside Dr George Legg of King’s College London and Dr Maggie Scull of Syracuse University London. All three previously worked on an Irish Government-funded project on the legacy of the Peace Process, #Agreement20, and a Being Human event on the legacy of the Manchester Bombing of 1996.

The researchers invite the community to share the personal stories and family memories of the conflict before they slowly pass out of living memory, as the impact of the period continues to shape the lives of Irish people in Britain across the generations.

Professor Magennis said: “This subject matter could not be closer to my heart or feel more urgent in the current moment.

“Greater Manchester’s Irish community are a force that is shaping politics, culture and business across the region, but many of the diaspora carry memories of the past and have stories to tell. Sometimes, you can’t stop us!

“Felt Memory is a way to give voice to the complexity in open dialogue and find creative common ground.”

The project is also supported by Professor Ursula Hurley as a creative advisor, with research assistants Aisling Logan (final year PhD student) and Grace de Blaca (MA Creative Writing graduate) exploring the cultural history of the Irish in Britain.

Participants will have the opportunity to contribute across two free evening sessions at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester in February 2027. On Thursday 18 February, the session will be for people who remember the Troubles themselves to contribute. On Friday 19 February, the session for people whose sense of the conflict has come from their family or community.

Each evening will last from 6pm to 8pm and consists small-group conversation with a short creative writing exercise. Places for both sessions can be booked through Eventbrite.

Felt Memory is funded by a Reignite Your Research award from the University of Salford, with support from the Consulate General of Ireland for Northern England, which is funding the venue and Irish Community Care, which is providing trained support workers at each session.

The pilot study is aimed to help shape a large project based around the 30th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement in 2028. For more information on Felt Memory, contact Professor Magennis at c.magennis@salford.ac.uk