About Reconciliation Studies, MPhil, Graduate Diploma - at Trinity College Dublin
The need for social healing and peace-building in societies that have suffered violent conflicts highlights both the necessity and the difficulty of political reconciliation. Even as the importance of reconciliation becomes ever more apparent, however, so too does uncertainty and disagreement among both practitioners and scholars about what reconciliation means and how it can be achieved. The Belfast-based M.Phil. in Reconciliation Studies is designed to address the challenge of developing a fuller, more complex, and more systematic understanding of reconciliation through engaged academic study.
Thirty years of political violence in Northern Ireland have taught people some costly wisdom about reconciliation and the practical and everyday problems of Northern Ireland’s ‘Troubles’. Alongside this local context, the programme looks at conflict and political transitions in other societies - including Latin America, South Africa, Bosnia and the Middle East - to develop a wider sense of post-conflict challenges and a cross-cultural perspective on reconciliation. A distinctive feature of the programme is the attention it gives to the often complex role of religion, and the ways in which religions can contribute to division and conflict or to reconciliation and peace.
Programme ContentFive courses must be taken. Students are assessed on Dynamics of Reconciliation and on three other courses, at least one of which must be either Theology of Reconciliation, Conflict Transformation, or Northern Ireland - Conflict and Reconciliation.
AssessmentThe assessment consists of four 5000-6000 word essays (or equivalent) to be completed by 1 May, and an 18-20,000 word thesis to be completed by 15 September.
All students are registered on a common Masters programme and follow the same assessment procedures for the four essays required. A postgraduate Diploma is also available.
Subject to satisfactory performance in the four essays, students may proceed to submission of a dissertation for the M.Phil. degree. Students who do not reach that standard, but who nonetheless are judged by the Court of Examiners to have reached a satisfactory level of performance, may be recommended for the award of a postgraduate Diploma, without further assessment.
