On October 16th, UC Berkeley’s Institute of European Studies (IES) hosted Dr. Giada Lagana, a Leverhulme Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer in Politics at Cardiff University, for a presentation on the key ideas from her first monograph. Lagana, whose work primarily focuses on Ireland, is currently an IES Visiting Scholar. Her monograph, The European Union and the Northern Ireland Peace Process, examines the role the European Union played in resolving the Troubles, the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland that spanned from the 1960s to 1998. There were 20 participants in attendance.
Lagana began her lecture by providing context on the conflict she studies. She is the President of the Irish Association For Contemporary European Studies and a Fellow of the British Royal Historical Society. While reviewing her credentials, she humorously noted the irony of being an Italian academic specializing in Irish politics. To ensure clarity for those unfamiliar with the Troubles, Lagana explained that the conflict’s roots trace back to the Government of Ireland Act of 1920, which partitioned the Ireland into two political entities: the independent, majority-Catholic Republic of Ireland and Protestant-majority Northern Ireland, which remained a part of the United Kingdom. She then identified two main factions in the Troubles—the Protestant Unionists and the Catholic Nationalists—and provided a broad overview of its key events, from the conflict's start to 1972’s “Bloody Sunday” and the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
Lagana then outlined the central question of her book: does the European Union—or its predecessor, the European Commission—“deserve a space” in the academic literature on the Northern Ireland peace process? To answer this, she analyzed over 8,000 different archival sources and conducted 25 interviews with key figures in the peace process. Her conclusion was that the European Union was the second-most important foreign actor in the peace process, after the United States.
Lagana also emphasized that beyond just its prominence, the European Union’s role in the Northern Ireland peace process had several key characteristics. These included a marked subtlety and an emphasis on metagovernance, which empowers societal networks to play an active role in political processes.
After concluding her presentation, Lagana answered a number of questions from the audience on her research. She said that in her second monograph, she plans to address the role of civil servants within the Northern Ireland peacebuilding process.