25 year ago on April 10th, 1998 since the Good Friday Agreement was signed in Belfast, Ireland. Put simply, the agreement established a power-sharing government in Northern Ireland, where those who wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom and those who wanted a united Ireland would have a say in how the region was governed. 

Dr. Kara Dempsey joins us to discuss the Belfast Agreement, how it came about, and how it has been utilized since. She also briefly but expansively lays out the past century of Northern Ireland history. 

Kara is the author of the recently published book titled An Introduction to the Geopolitics of Conflict, Nationalism, and Reconciliation in Ireland.

Dr. Kara E. Dempsey is an associate professor of Geography and Planning at Appalachian State University. She is a political and cultural geographer with interests in nationalism, sectarian conflicts and reconciliation, international forced migration, spatiality and politics of religion, landscape policies and environmental change in Europe, as well as the implications of transnational medical care in Sub-Saharan Africa. Dr. Dempsey’s current work examines the geopolitics of international forced migration and asylum policies in Europe since 2015. She is also studying conflict and peacebuilding in Ireland as well as Brexit proceedings in Ireland and the UK.

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