Leslie Wilmart Angelo,
Brussels 07/12/11

Since, I finished my MA in Peace and Conflict Studies in 2002, I joined UN and EU Missions in DemocraticRepublic of Congo, Kosovo, Serbia, Haiti and Iraq. Until recently, and for the last 5 years, I have led the Human Rights and Gender Unit for the EU Integrated Rule of Law Mission for Iraq based in Brussels.The role involved developing human rights and gender policies that were both in line with international standardswhile remaining practical and applicable to the context of Iraq. I am now working as a Senior Advisor in Peacebuilding for a consultancy firm.

Dealing with conflicts remains one of the major challenges of the world today. Conflicts take different forms and no two conflicts are the same. The MA in Peace and Conflict Studies armed me with the necessary tools for understanding causes of conflicts and work towards achievable solutions. Not only is the MA course an important tool for those wanting to work in the area of peace building and reconstruction, is it also a good platform for developing further skills, in my case human rights and gender. Finally, the MA was a great human experience where people from different walks of life were able to exchange ideas, learn from each other and build lasting friendships.

Ben Cote,
DC law firm. (pictured with Senator George Mitchell)

The Masters program in Peace and Conflict Studies has been invaluable for my career. First, the graduate degree itself immediately qualified me to work in public service nationally and internationally. After my studies, my MA was extremely helpful in gaining competitive positions as a Capital City Fellow for the city of Washington, DC, and a Geneva Externship at the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development.

Secondly, the program had direct application to working on the ground. I spent a significant amount of time in Sri Lanka, where I worked with National Peace Council, a domestic peacebuilding NGO. There I used my MA syllabus to help design a syllabus for a Sri Lankan university's peace and conflict studies program, drafted pieces on conflict analysis, and helped create a program on pluralism that is still in existence. Later, as an independent researcher for the Council for Public Policy in Colombo, I published a research paper for track-two nonprofit that drew heavily on my education in Northern Ireland for peace within a unitary state framework.

After Sri Lanka I received a law degree from the University of Michigan and currently I work in an international trade practice group at a law firm in DC. I plan to continue to work in areas surrounding international disputes, and I am confident that the benefits of my experience with the MA program will continue to accrue.

Maureen Hetherington,
Director, The Junction: Towards Understanding and Healing.

In the early 90s I enrolled in a Postgraduate Degree and Masters in Peace Studies at the Magee Campus, University of Ulster. I was employed as a Community Relations Office for Derry City Council at that time and I needed to develop critical thinking skills and a good theoretical framework for the work I was engaged in.

The knowledge and critical thinking skills developed through the Peace Studies Programme has been invaluable to me and given me confidence to do the work. I have headed up several major projects, examples include:

• The Junction: Community Relations Resource and Peace Building Centre
• Seeing Sense: Prejudice Challenge Face On: Educational Resources for post-primary schools (a copy of which has been placed in every post-primary school across NI.
• Towards Understanding and Healing: Dealing with the Past through Storytelling and Positive Encounter Dialogue (includes a comprehensive training resource).
• Ethical and Shared Remembering: Commemoration in a New Context: Remembering a Decade of Change and Violence 1912 – 1922.

I have also been a Board member of the Community Relations Council, NI for seven years, and served as Chair in the Communications Sub-Committee and Chair of the Victims and Survivors Grant Aid Programme. I have sat on many boards and organisations driving forward a peace agenda and engaged with local, regional, national and international organisations. I have had the privilege of delivering lectures and workshops in many countries and two universities abroad have implemented our training resources as part of their curriculum.

Jennifer C Cornell,
Reads Well Editing & Student Support Services, Belfast

I received my MA in Peace Studies from the University of Ulster in 1991.  Doing the degree part-time allowed me to explore each module without haste; as a consequence, my time at Magee is among my best ever as a student. The most valuable lesson I took from the programme was to read from the long and excellent lists provided only what interested me, and to abandon anything that did not hold my attention. This enormously liberating suggestion made possible the discovery of books on either side of the titles for which I’d been searching which often proved as stimulating and relevant as those on the list. Through that process, and guided by mentors who approved and encouraged exploration into other fields, I refined my interest in (among other things) the contact hypothesis, Education for Mutual Understanding, the character of grief and the management of memory, the role of forgiveness in conflict transformation, and the representation of Northern Ireland in film and fiction.

These themes informed my own work as a fiction writer (see Departures, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995) and shaped the content of many of the courses I taught as a professor of English at Oregon State University (1994 – 2004), including several on the language and literature of political violence. Since then, my Peace Studies background has helped me secure a post as Community Support Coordinator with Greater Shankill Alternatives, a community-based restorative justice organisation that seeks to develop non-violent responses to low-level crime and anti-social behaviour (2004 – 2009), work which has led to my current involvement with the District Policing Partnership and other community development projects throughout North Belfast. Thanks to the multi-disciplinary nature of Peace Studies, I also am able to serve as a useful critic on a wide range of subjects in the arts, humanities and social sciences, a skill on which my business, Reads Well Editing & Student Support Services, is based.