Fieldwork in Northern Ireland

The funding was used for the fieldwork in Northern Ireland in connection with the empirical research of the dissertation in January 2015.

The research has the major aim of examining the influence of political, non-violent resolution attempts to bring ethno-nationalist conflicts to an end. In order to draw an understanding on conflict resolution approaches, the purpose was to make a comparison between two major cases: the Northern Ireland and Turkey peace process.

The fieldwork in Northern Ireland was conducted with the representatives of the political parties through semi-structured interviews. In addition, it was a great chance to talk to the representatives of different political positions such as nationalists, republicans and unionists. In particular, I interviewed with the representatives of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, Democratic Unionist Party, Ulster Unionist Party and Sinn Fein. It definitely added a great value to the research in order to understand the Northern Irish peace process.

Aytac Kadioglu, Doctoral Researcher