Peter Shirlow

Professor Peter Shirlow is Director of the University of Liverpool's Institute of Irish Studies.

He was previously Deputy Director of the Institute for Conflict Transformation and Social Justice at Queen's University Belfast. He is the Independent Chair of the OFM/DFM Employers' Guidance on Recruiting People with Conflict-Related Convictions Working Group and a board member of the mental health charity Threshold.

His research interests focus on the themes of political violence, post-conflict transformation, policing and community and the impact of ethno-sectarian reproduction. This includes a particular emphasis upon former combatants and their inclusion/exclusion within civic society. He has undertaken a series of consultations with political actors in Montenegro, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Turkey, Serbia, Macedonia and Bosnia. He has also undertaken significant survey research regarding ethno-sectarian based segregation that has studied inter-community immobility, the power and influence of prejudice and the psychological impact upon families living within interfaced communities.

He has published more than 80 pieces of work on these issues and has served/is serving on the editorial boards of Capital and Class, Irish Political Studies and International Planning Studies. In 2011 his co-authored book Abandoning Historical Conflict? won the PSAI Brian Farell Prize. His work has been funded by the ESRC, Leverhulme, JRCT and EU’s Interreg IIC programme.