During his visit to Derry in November 1995 President Clinton inaugurated
a program of Peace Studies in the memory of Tip O'Neill, the late Irish-American
speaker of the US House of Representatives. 
The Awards comprise the Tip
O'Neill Chair in Peace Studies and the Tip O'Neill Fellowship. They are
funded by the American Ireland Funds and are located within INCORE, on
the Magee Campus of the University of Ulster, Londonderry, Northern Ireland.
Tip O’Neill Fellows in Peace Studies are awarded for six month
periods to graduates with proven research records in peace and conflict
studies. He/she will be expected to complete an agreed research project
related to INCORE’s research activities or be completing their
doctoral thesis on a related theme. The stipend will be £13,000
for the six months with travel allowance.
Current Tip O’Neill Fellow (2004-5): Cathy Gormley-Heenan
Cathy comes to INCORE from the School of Policy Studies in the University of Ulster where 
she has taught as a lecturer in government for the past eighteen months. Previously she worked for the Community Relations Council in Northern Ireland managing and commissioning research projects undertaken through the CRC’s EU programme which administered EU PEACE II money. She is currently a member of CRC’s EU Funding Committee, which helps to allocate PEACE II funding in Northern Ireland .
Cathy will use the Tip O’Neill fellowship to finish writing up her PhD on aspects of political leadership during the Northern Ireland peace process. A number of articles stemming from the thesis will be prepared and be submitted to peer-reviewed journals in early 2005. She will also create a John Hume web archive for the Tip O'Neill Chair in Peace Studies. Details of this archive are currently being agreed but it will hopefully include a photo gallery and video library of some of John’s lectures and speeches given as Tip O’Neill Chair. As a third aspect of her Fellowship, Cathy will contribute to the development of an e-learning masters module on peace and conflict studies. She has considerable expertise in developing web based learning methods for students and will use this expertise to help INCORE develop a module to include video-clips of lectures, online real-time virtual seminars and online exams
From 1997-2002, Cathy was employed by the University of Ulster as a Research Officer, first at INCORE from 1997-2001 and then in the School of Policy Studies from 2001-2002. During this time, she worked to develop INCORE’s Conflict Data Service, edited INCORE’s Ethnic Conflict Research Digest and worked on a research project which examined political leadership transitions in divided societies. This resulted in the report ‘From Protagonist to Pragmatist: Political leadership in Societies in Transition’ (Derry/Londonderry: INCORE, 2001). A chapter based on the report entitled ‘Protagonists and Pragmatists in Northern Ireland ’, was written with Gillian Robinson and published in Owen Hargie and David Dickson (eds), Researching the Troubles: Social Science Perspectives on the Northern Ireland Conflict, Mainstream, Edinburgh .
Apart from teaching undergraduate and graduate level government classes, Cathy has taught on issues of political leadership in societies in transition, both at the University of Ulster and at the UNU International Leadership Academy in Amman in 2000 & 2004 and was awarded a fellowship in leadership studies at the James Burns MacGregor Academy of Leadership at the University of Maryland in 2000. Other awards have included a Kennedy Scholarship to the J.F.K. School of Government and Public Policy at Harvard University in 1996-1997. Prior to this scholarship, Cathy took an MPhil in Middle Eastern Studies at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University . She also holds a first class honours degree in political science from Queens University, Belfast .
Publications by Cathy Gormley-Heenan
