Callum McNeillThe announcement of the closure of the Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN) website has raised some important questions surrounding the future of academic study and research on the Troubles in Northern Ireland, as well as its impact on Northern Ireland’s post-conflict society more generally.
The website contains a valuable range of content, curated by Ulster University and run as part of its research collaboration with Queen’s University Belfast through ‘Ark’ (Access Research Knowledge). The different materials the website covers include photographs, party policy papers, newspaper articles, maps, and detailed chronologies, spanning the period of the Troubles right up to the present day. A wide range of research articles published on the site help to shine a light on the origins of conflict (such as Landon Hancock’s paper entitled ‘Northern Ireland: Trouble Brewing’) and on post-conflict developments (such as Peter Shirlow’s article ‘The State they are Still In’. Republican Ex-Prisoners and their families: An Independent Evaluation‘).
Within academia, the website has facilitated a cross-displinary approach to the study of events that have occurred in Northern Ireland from the commencement of the Troubles in 1968 to the present day, covering key aspects of political and social history. As direct experience of conflict becomes more distant, the website has been able to provide the newest generation studying Northern Ireland – from political, historical, legal, geographical, criminological, sociological, and anthropological perspectives – with a more tangible understanding and knowledge of the turbulent past endured by the people of Northern Ireland.
So what will the closure of the website mean?
Most obviously, it will make research more difficult. I for one found the site to be an invaluable resource for my recent Master’s thesis on the transformation of nationalism, which has subsequently been published in a journal. It directed me to excellent works with useful insights, including BRACE YOURSELF BRIDGE IT! A Guide to Irish Political Relationships, 1996-1998 by Martyn Turner (1998).
The impact stretches beyond producers and consumers of research in Northern Ireland. As Goretti Horgan, a social policy lecturer at Ulster University noted in a BBC news interview that “CAIN … has a global reach.” From its establishment in 1996 until December 2018 the website has had 22 million visits.
Even more broadly, the closure of the website will not only affect academics, but it is also bad news in the context of Northern Ireland’s post-conflict society. Where else can people so easily access information to make sense of Northern Ireland’s complicated past? That question applies to people of all generations in Northern Ireland itself, as well as people all over the world who suddenly find themselves trying to understand the politics of Northern Ireland. We should be promoting resources like CAIN, not shutting them down.
If it goes ahead, the closure of the CAIN website will be a huge loss for both academics and others as Northern Ireland enters a critical phase in its post-conflict journey.
