Our final report from the 2023 BAIS Bursary Prize winners comes from Peter Bothwell (University of St Andrews). Peter’s bursary enabled him to travel to Northern Ireland to conduct integral interviews for his doctoral project:
The bursary allowed me to travel to Northern Ireland to conduct three rounds of interviews for the project. The project relies on in-depth (1-3 hour) interviews with members of the Loyalist community. The nature of long form interpretive phenomenological interviews necessitated that they take place in person. The bursary allowed me to travel to the interviewees themselves so that they felt comfortable in their own space. These interviews helped to reveal the myriad of positive projects and concerns apparent in Loyalist communities. This is invaluable to the wider project investigating themes of agency and alienation in Loyalist and British working-class communities. These interviews help to clarify the contemporary understandings and viewpoints of the Loyalist community while situating them in a wider global context. It is hoped this will add to the discipline of Irish Studies by forming a base on which to understand Loyalist communities in their everyday contexts.
The bursary allowed for seven in depth interviews to take place providing 12 hours of recorded material. This will form the basis of the project and will be analysed via an interpretive phenomenological analysis. Contacts and relationships were build with a wide range of stakeholders within the Loyalist community and grassroots activism. This will be, and has been, valuable for building further contacts and relationships beneficial to the study. This can also act as a strong contact base for future studies into Loyalist communities.
Work from the study has so far been presented at the British International Studies Association conference in June 2023 and the Political Studies Association of Ireland conference October 2023. The research conducted will provide the large part of a doctoral thesis estimated to be submitted February 2025.
Peter Bothwell is a PhD student in International Relations at the University of St Andrews. His doctoral project compares narratives of alienation and disenfranchisement in the Loyalist and British white working-class communities to better understand the particularities of each. This study aims to collect the up-to-date narratives and concerns of these communities in Ireland and Britain, with the hope that these understandings may contribute to the formation of policies which do not further alienate these communities, but rather build trust and promote peace and partnership.
*Image courtesy of Island Pamphlets
British Association for Irish Studies 