The current «decade of centenaries» and commemorations on both sides of the Irish Sea is providing an opportunity both to reflect upon significant events and challenges that the island of Ireland has been confronted with in the past, and also to contemplate and focus on the future. This multidisciplinary volume owes much to the ongoing debate within Northern Ireland, as an integral part of the conflict transformation process, on how to build a shared and better future for all citizens out of a divided and traumatic past. Drawing on the crossdisciplinary nature of Irish Studies, the authors from the fields of history, literary and cultural studies, politics and sociology explore the legacy of the Troubles and the consequences for Northern Ireland more than twenty years after the Good Friday Agreement.

Lesley Lelourec is Senior Lecturer at the University of Rennes 2, France. Her research focuses on British attitudes to Ireland, Northern Ireland and the Troubles, and on Anglo-Irish relations in general. She has co-edited a collection in the Reimagining Ireland Series, entitled Ireland and Victims: Confronting the Past, Forging the Future, 2012, with Gráinne O'Keeffe-Vigneron. Her most recent research comprises a study of the impacts of the 1993 IRA Warrington bombings on the peace process. Gráinne O'Keeffe-Vigneron is Senior Lecturer at the University of Rennes 2, France. She is currently working on the Irish diaspora in France and is co-directing, 'Les diasporas irlandaises: enjeux économiques, migrations, integration' as part of a national research project in Irish studies in France (Groupement d'Intérêt Scientifique (G.I.S EIRE)) and has recently completed a report on the Irish in France for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Dublin.