Voices from the Margins: Young men and post-conflict masculinities in Northern Ireland
This paper points to the gap (noted in the YPS Progress Study’s recommendations) on masculinity and masculine identities as part of the gendered approach to implementing the YPS agenda. This policy brief focuses attention on supporting the development of alternative and positive masculine identities. While the paper draws on lived experiences in Northern Ireland, it derives lessons and recommendations, captures stories, and offers a narrative with wider relevance for other contexts.
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Authors
Brandon Hamber
Professor Brandon Hamber is the John Hume and Thomas P. O’Neill Chair in Peace at Ulster University at the International Conflict Research Institute (INCORE). He is a member of the Transitional Justice Institute. He trained as a Clinical Psychologist in South Africa. He has undertaken consulting and research work, and participated in peace initiatives, in Northern Ireland, South Africa, Liberia, Mozambique, Bosnia, Colombia, the Basque Country and Sierra Leone, among others. He has published some 30 journal articles, over 25 book chapters and 4 books. He was awarded The Paul Harris medal for contributions to peace by Rotary (2013), and was listed in the Top 100: The most influential people in armed violence reduction by the Action on Armed Violence Network (2013/2014). Professor Hamber is a board member of Healing Through Remembering (Northern Ireland) and Impunity Watch (Netherlands.
Conor Murray
Dr Conor Murray is a Lecturer in Criminology. His doctoral research included a nine-month ethnographic study of the young offender’s prison, Hydebank Wood. In this innovative study, he conducted participant observation in the institution 3–4 days per week including weekends, evenings and public holidays, partaking in vocational training, educational classes, and recreational activities with young male prisoners. Analysing the data through the lens of critical masculinities studies, he has published the findings in public and academic format. The culmination of this work will be published next year in his book Young men, Masculinities and Imprisonment, in the Palgrave MacMillan’s globally leading ‘Studies in Prisons and Penology’ book line. More recently, he has been commissioned multiple times by the Irish Football Association to provide consultancy advice and conduct research into their ongoing sport-based interventions with prisoners in all three prison sites in the North of Ireland. He is an Executive Committee board member at NIACRO, one the leading non-governmental organisations in working towards the reduction of crime and its impact on people and communities.
