معرفی
Maire Braniff is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at Ulster University's School of Applied Social and Policy Sciences, where she has taught since 2013 and served as Director of INCORE (International Conflict Research Institute) from 2016-2018. Based at Belfast campus (Room BC-07-131), she is affiliated with the Institute for Research in Social Sciences and holds an ORCID (0000-0003-2016-9877).
Her research centers on peace, justice and truth recovery at the intersection of competing narratives, power dynamics, and victimhood across post-conflict societies. Specializing in comparative conflict studies, she examines:
- Conflict resolution mechanisms in the Balkans, Northern Ireland, South Caucasus and Southeast Asia
- Legacies of violent conflict and memorialization practices
- Memory politics and commemoration in divided societies
- Unionist and nationalist political evolution in Northern Ireland
- EU enlargement policy impacts on post-conflict regions
Analysis of her recent publications reveals a consistent focus on memory politics and narrative contestation in post-agreement societies, with increasing emphasis on gender dimensions (e.g., WE CAN project) and tourism's peacebuilding potential. Her 2023-2024 work examines Alliance Party's transcendence of traditional unionism/nationalism binaries while analyzing how historical legacies shape contemporary political behavior.
Key awards include:
- British Academy Rising Star Award for Engagement (2016/2017)
- Paddy Power Political Book Award (2015) for 'Inside the Democratic Unionist Party'
- Political Studies Brian Farrell Book Prize (2015)
- Sir Bernard Crick PSA Teaching Prize (2012)
As principal investigator for major projects including Women's ReconciliNation Project (2025-2029) and WE CAN (2023-2024), she secures significant research funding while serving on European Commission review panels and as Academic Friend of the European Peacebuilding Liaison Office. Her current work emphasizes women's empowerment in post-conflict reconstruction through capacity-building initiatives across contested spaces.
