Reading socio-political and spatial dynamics through graffiti in conflict-affected societies co-Investigator with Billy Tusker Haworth, Birte Vogel, Catherine Arthur (Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, University of Manchester) and Dylan O’Driscoll (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute). This is an interdisciplinary, inter-institutional research project that utilises street art and graffiti to offer a commentary on contested spaces. In this project graffiti is seen as particularly valuable in (post)conflict societies undergoing social and political transformation, as understanding the writing on the walls furthers knowledge of peace and conflict practices, and contributes to understandings of dynamic everyday interactions with (and in) space.
Rewards and Risk, Benefits and Burden: Side-by-Side Adaptation in Small Island Communities co-Investigator with Greg Oulahen (X University, Toronto, Canada)
This project was awarded a 3-year Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Insight Grant in July 2020. This research explores climate change and island life in Canada, in particular the political challenges implicit in the benefits and burdens of adaptation. The project directly engages tensions of policy and practice as they are experienced across urban and rural life, and across the Indigenous-settler relationship on Canadian islands.
Side-by-side in the land of Giants: A study of space, contact and civility in Belfast Primary Investigator
Eric is finishing up publications from his PhD research which engaged the legacies and challenges of the longstanding conflict in Northern Ireland within the unorthodox space created by ice hockey in Belfast. Through research conducted side-by-side the supporters of the Belfast Giants, his research focused on the everyday and the banality of ‘getting on with it’ in the shadows of longstanding division.