Thanks to the inaugural David Matz Fellowship Program, three graduate students spent 10 days in Northern Ireland focusing on the achievements of the past and the key contemporary challenges still facing peace-building in the region.

Saadia Ahmed, Enrico Manolo, and Josephine Patterson joined Professor Marie Breen-Smyth to travel to Armagh County which, at one time, was referred to as “bandit country” where disputes over parades between local nationalist residents and the Protestant Orange orders drew world media attention.

“Our students were walking the streets of Armagh with former combatants and survivors of the Troubles, seeing the exact places were key events took place with the people who participated in and lived through those events, and then reflecting with the very peacemakers themselves as to how they have been trying to build bridges across those divides, and reviewing the impacts together,” said Darren Kew, director of McCormack Graduate School’s Center for Peace, Democracy, and Development. “Education does not get any better than this!” Read more.