This symposium focuses on perspectives from the 'margins', inspired by the peace achieved in post conflict Northern Ireland. 

Experts from Northern Ireland, the United States and beyond will share epistemic insights and lived experiences of building peace from hidden, excluded or marginalised locations. 

This event will showcase interdisciplinary peace work and think collectively about building political solidarity and scholarship that challenges conventional post conflict narratives.

Programme

23 February 2026

12.30pm to 5.00pm

Followed by a poetry reading and reception

24 February 2026

9.00am to 5.15pm

Co-ordinators

Professor Marsha Henry 

Marsha is the Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton Chair in Women, Peace, Security and Justice at the Mitchell Institute.  Her research is concerned with the gendered and racialised politics of violence; militarisation; global south development; international aid and intervention; and conflict, peace, and security.  She is the author of several books, the latest of which is: The End of Peacekeeping:  Gender, Race, and the Martial Politics of Intervention (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024). 

Marsha has also advised a number of national governments on women’s participation in the armed forces, combatting sexual exploitation and abuse in humanitarian settings, and developing anti-racist and diversity strategies in foreign policy ministries.

Professor Molly Merryman

Molly Merryman, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the School of Peace and Conflict Studies at Kent State University, where she has been a leader in establishing gender and sexuality-based programs, curriculum and centers, including the oldest LGBTQ+ Studies program in Ohio.

She is an oral historian, documentary/ethnographic filmmaker, and cultural historian whose scholarship explores societal marginalization and activism, with a particular focus on gender, gender identity, sexual orientation and race. She has served as volunteer research director for Queer Britain, for whom she leads the Virtually Queer video-based oral history project. 

This event is funded by the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice at Queen's University, Belfast and the School of Peace and Conflict Studies, Kent State University.

Kent State University's School of Peace and Conflict Studies evolved from its roots as the Center for Peaceful Change, established in 1971 as the University's original "living memorial" to the students shot on May 4, 1970 when Ohio National Guardsmen killed four and injured nine Kent State University students during a student protest against the United States' war in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. 

Currently, the School of Peace and Conflict Studies offers course at all collegiate levels (BA, MA and Ph.D), providing both career training and multidisciplinary research experiences, all of which are centered on working for peaceful change.