About the Conference

The conference marks the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Good Friday/ Belfast Agreement in Northern Ireland. It centers the often overlooked efforts that operate at the intersections of gender, class, transitional justice and peace-building. For the first time, 20 working-class women from cross-community grassroots organizations in Northern Ireland, will travel to Boston to be in dialogue with students, scholars, practitioners, members of civic society, and the extended Irish and Northern Irish community. Our focus is to encourage the development of new and mutually beneficial relationships that will extend beyond the conference.

The conference program cuts across a range of approaches, including round table “Conversations,” informal workshops, slam poetry, film, and first-hand accounts from conflict survivors. We invite students, scholars, practitioners, members of civil society as well as those curious about “post-conflict” NI to join us for this unprecedented event.

Topics of the conversation include:

• Gender, Civic Society and Peacebuilding: Dispatches from the Ground
• Gender and Restorative Justice: Empowering the Grassroots
• Trauma and Healing: Grassroots Solutions
• Framing Narratives: Sectarianism, Racism & Displacement
• Social Justice and Policing: Who is Serving Whom?
• Educational Achievement in Contested Spaces: Who Suffers Most?

We would like to extend sincere thanks to our generous sponsors.  A full list of sponsors is available here.

We acknowledge that land acknowledgements are complicated.  Still, we would like to acknowledge the territory on which Boston University stands is that of The Wampanoag and The Massachusett People. Our classrooms and BU’s campus are places to honor and respect the history and continued efforts of the Native and Indigenous community leaders which make up Eastern Massachusetts and the surrounding region. This statement is one small step in acknowledging the history that brought us to reside on the land, and to help us seek understanding of our place within that history. Ownership of land is itself a colonial concept; many tribes had seasonal relationships with the land we currently inhabit. Today, Boston is still home to indigenous peoples, including the Mashpee Wampanoag and Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah). For more information, please visit the North American Indian Center of Boston and the Commission on Indian Affairs of the State of Massachusetts.