We return to interviews from earlier seasons to hear guests' insights on the pasts, presents, and futures of Britain and Ireland. Featured in this episode are Mary McAleese, Claire Mitchell, Gail McConnell, and Ebun Joseph.

As always, you can download a full transcript and discussion questions here.

Sef Townsend is a storyteller and musician. He’s collected stories and songs from his travels all around the globe, and has worked with refugees, people in exile and those in asylum detention. Sef’s work has included peace and reconciliation projects, and sharing his stories with audiences in schools, museums, churches, mosques and synagogues around the world. He has co-written two collections of short stories: London Folk Tales for Children (The History Press, 2019) and London’s River Tales for Children (The History Press, 2022).

As always, you can download a full transcript and discussion questions here.

Juliane Okot Bitek is a poet. Her 100 Days (University of Alberta Press, 2016) was nominated for several writing prizes including the 2017 BC Book Prize, the Pat Lowther Award, the 2017 Alberta Book Awards and the 2017 Canadian Authors Award for Poetry. It won the 2017 IndieFab Book of the Year Award for poetry and the 2017 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry. Her second collection, A is for Acholi (Wolsak and Wynn, 2022), was shortlisted for the 2023 Pat Lowther Memorial Award and is a finalist for the 2023 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, and the 2023 Jim Deva Prize for Writing that Provokes. Her most recent collection of poetry, Song & Dread (2023), is published by Talonbooks under the name Otoniya J. Okot Bitek. She is an assistant professor of Black Studies, joint appointed in English and Gender Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.

A full transcript of the episode, along with group discussion questions, is available here.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is joined by Sarah Perry, the internationally bestselling author of the novels Melmoth (Serpent’s Tail, 2018), The Essex Serpent (Serpent’s Tail, 2016), and After Me Comes the Flood (Serpent’s Tail, 2014), and the non-fiction Essex Girls (Serpent’s Tail, 2020). She is a winner of the Waterstone’s Book of the Year Awards and the British Book Awards, and has been nominated for major literary prizes including the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Folio Prize and the Costa Novel Award. She is the Chancellor of the University of Essex, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her essays have been published in the Guardian, the New York Times, the Observer, and the London Review of Books. She has been the UNESCO City of Literature Writer in Residence in Prague, and the Writer in Residence at the Savoy Hotel in London. Her no. 1 bestseller The Essex Serpent was adapted for television starring Clare Danes and Tom Hiddleston in the lead roles. Her new novel, Enlightenment, will be published by Jonathan Cape (UK) and Harper Collins (US) in May 2024.

A full transcript of the episode, along with group discussion questions, is available here.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is joined by Richard Holloway, who was the Bishop of Edinburgh in the Scottish Episcopal Church from 1986-2000. Richard is the author of thirty books, including Godless Morality: Keeping Religion Out of Ethics (Canongate, 1999), Stories We Tell Ourselves (Canongate, 2020), and Waiting for the Last Bus (Canongate, 2018). His book Leaving Alexandria: A Memoir of Faith and Doubt (Canongate, 2012) was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and won the PEN Ackerley prize. He was chairman of the Scottish Arts Council from 2005-2010, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. A frequent broadcaster, he has presented a number of television series and radio programmes, including Three Score Years and Ten for BBC Radio 4.

A full transcript of the episode, along with group discussion questions, is available here.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is joined by Duncan Morrow. Duncan is a lecturer in politics and Director of Community Engagement at Ulster University. In 1998, he was appointed as a Sentence Review Commissioner, and from 2002-2012 he was chief executive of the Northern Ireland Community Relations Council. He has also chaired the Scottish government's advisory group on tackling sectarianism. Duncan’s academic interests include conflict, ethics, and religion.

Duncan joins Pádraig to talk about the shifting nature of our identities, the importance of relationship in politics, and the necessity of acknowledging complicity in conflict.

A full transcript of the episode, along with group discussion questions, is available here.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is joined by Veena O’Sullivan. Veena has worked for the international relief and development charity Tearfund since 2000. She has focused particularly on HIV, peacebuilding, and violence against women and girls. Originally from Bengaluru in the southern part of India, Veena has lived in Ireland since 2015.  In 2021, she became the international director of Tearfund UK. 

Veena joins Pádraig to talk about the complexities of ‘relief and development’, and what sustains her in her work.

A full transcript of the episode, along with group discussion questions, is available here.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is joined by Dr. Jude Lal Fernando.
Jude is a campaigner and peace activist who coordinated the People’s Tribunal of Sri Lanka. He teaches interreligious theology and ethics at the Irish School of Ecumenics in Trinity College Dublin, and directs the Trinity Centre for Post-Conflict Justice. His publications include Religion, Conflict and Peace in Sri Lanka: The Politics of Interpretation of Nationhoods (Lit Verlag, 2013), and Resistance to Empire and Militarization: Reclaiming the Sacred (Equinox, 2020).

A full transcript of the episode, along with group discussion questions, is available here.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is joined by Oliver Jeffers.
Oliver is a visual artist and author working in painting, bookmaking, illustration, collage, performance, and sculpture. Curiosity and humour are underlying themes throughout Oliver’s practice as an artist and storyteller. While investigating the ways the human mind understands its world, his work also functions as comic relief in the face of futility. His acclaimed picture books have been translated into over fifty languages, and have sold over 14 million copies worldwide.

His original artwork has been exhibited at such institutions as the Brooklyn Museum in New York, the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, and the National Portrait Gallery in London. Oliver grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and currently divides his time between there and Brooklyn, NY.

A full transcript of the episode, along with group discussion questions, is available here.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is joined by Marina Cantacuzino.
Marina is an award-winning British journalist and founder of The Forgiveness Project, a UK charity that uses the real stories of victims and perpetrators to explore how ideas about forgiveness, reconciliation and restorative justice can be used to impact positively on people’s lives.

Marina is also the creator of The F Word Podcast, and author of three books on the topic of forgiveness, including Forgiveness: An Exploration, which was published by Simon & Schuster in 2022.

A full transcript of the episode, along with group discussion questions, is available here.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is joined by Katy Hayward. Katy is Professor of Political Sociology at Queen’s University Belfast, a Fellow of the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, and an Eisenhower Fellow.

Her latest books are the co-authored Northern Ireland a Generation After Good Friday (Manchester University Press, 2021) and the monograph What do we know and what should we do about… the Irish border? (Sage, 2021).

She has written and presented to media, policy, civic and academic audiences worldwide on the Irish border, Brexit, and the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland.

Katy joins Pádraig to talk about borders, British-Irish and international relations, and some of the important trends she’s seeing in the political landscape.

A full transcript of the episode, along with group discussion questions, is available here.

The Corrymeela Podcast is back in 2023 for a second season, with six episodes in the spring and six in the autumn. Host Pádraig Ó Tuama will be speaking with artists and writers and academics about art, conflict, theology, politics, and reconciliation. We’ll be back with you on 7th April, speaking with the brilliant political sociologist Katy Hayward.

Yousif M. Qasmiyeh is a poet and scholar whose work has appeared in publications including Modern Poetry in Translation, Critical Quarterly, Cambridge Literary Review, New England Review, and Poetry London. His collection Writing the Camp (Broken Sleep Books, 2021), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the 2022 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. Yousif is Writer in Residence for Refugee Hosts - a research project at University College London. His latest collection, Eating the Archive, was published by Broken Sleep Books in 2023.

As always, you can download a full transcript and discussion questions here.

In this, the final episode of the first season of the Corrymeela podcast, Pádraig Ó Tuama speaks to Martin Hayes, the renowned and multi-award winning fiddle player. Martin talks about how music carries culture, memory, place and possibility. As always, Martin has his fiddle with him, so he plays music that demonstrates his insight.

We have a full transcript and some reflection questions here.

Martin Hayes’ website is martinhayes.com His albums can be found online or in music shops or directly from the store on his website.

As we evaluate the first season of the podcast, we have a short feedback form (it should only take you a few minutes to fill in). We'd be delighted to hear from you.

A trailer for the final Episode of Season 1 Corrymeela Podcast, featuring the renowned fiddle player Martin Hayes, from East Clare. This special episode features a conversation with Martin about how music carries culture, memory, place and possibility and features him playing the fiddle as well as talking. Full episode will be released on Thursday.

Dr Lia Shimada is a a conflict mediator, a theologian and a geographer. She’s used these wide-ranging trainings to work at the interface of migration, ethnicity, change, religion and conflict. In this wide ranging conversation we discuss her experiences working in conflict mediation in Belfast, her experiences of migration, and how living with the death of her newborn son Rowan has influenced her sense of place.

As always you can find some reflection questions and a full transcript here.

This is the second-last episode of season 1 of the Corrymeela Podcast. We would love a few minutes of your time to get some feedback via this link..

You can find out more about Lia Shimada’s work on her website here. If you purchase ‘Mapping Faith; Theologies of Migration and Community’ from the publishers you can get a 25% discount (valid till the end of 2021) by using this code: ‘B25D9F4’ for the ebook and ‘MAPPING’ for the paperback.

This episode of the Corrymeela features host Pádraig Ó Tuama speaking with Michael Davies. Michael is the founder and director of Parallel Histories, a UK educational company that offers new ways to study the history of conflict. In this conversation we consider the ways history is taught in Britain, how the crisis of narration can be possibility, and how religion education would benefit by being taught through historical approaches, not only doctrinal ones.

As always you can find reflection questions and the full transcript here. And you can find out more about Parallel Histories here.

As mentioned in the podcast, we would love to get your feedback on the Corrymeela podcast via this short form here.

This episode of the Corrymeela Podcast features Peter Sheridan. For many years he was known as one of the senior-most Catholics in the police in Northern Ireland, and his policing career spanned the reform of the RUC into the PSNI. At the age of 48 he made a career change and became chief exec of the peacebuilding charity Cooperation Ireland.

As always you can find reflection questions and the full transcript here. And you can find out more about Cooperation Ireland here.

As mentioned in the podcast, we would love to get your feedback on our Corrymeela Podcast via this short form here.

For this episode of the Corrymeela Podcast, host Pádraig Ó Tuama speaks with Dr Ebun Joseph — sociologist, author, speaker, and originator of Ireland’s first course in Black Studies, based at University College Dublin. This wide ranging conversation approaches questions of Irishness and Britishness through narratives of race, discrimination and financial policies in places of employment.

You can find reflection questions and a full transcript here.

You can find out more about Dr Ebun Joseph’s work at University College Dublin here, or follow her on Twitter at @EbunJoseph Her academic text book Critical race theory and inequality in the labour market; Racial stratification in Ireland, can be bought here.

Professor of Constitutional Law, Christine Bell, speaks to the Corrymeela Podcast about Peace Treaties, Brexit, the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement and Human Rights. Christine Bell is a co-director of the Global Justice Academy, and a founder member of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (established under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement).

As always you can find a full transcript of the episode, as well as reflection questions, here.

You can find out more about Christine Bell’s work at the Edinburgh Law School here, or follow her on Twitter at @christinebelled

We were thrilled to speak to Irish rock legend The Edge, one part of U2. Born of Welsh parents and raised in Ireland, Edge has had longstanding interests in questions of politics, identity, belonging and religion. In this episode he speaks about all of these, and speaks, too, about how music has been the deepest call and passion of his life. Always interesting, always interested in learning, he shares what he’s reading, and how he sees the work of reconciliation being important in a changing Ireland, as well as in a changing world.

You can find some reflection questions and the full transcript by clicking here. U2’s website is u2.com

A brief trailer from the Corrymeela Podcast’s interview with The Edge, the legendary guitarist of the equally legendary Irish band U2. The full episode will be online — and in your podcast feeds — on the morning of Thursday 25th March, 2021.

We talk to the brilliant Claire Mitchell, a sociologist and writer from Belfast about Irishness, Britishness, border crossing, the unexpected advantages of a charismatic evangelical background, observations on religion from outside of religion, her grandmothers, and being a Lundy.

As always you can read the full transcript and find some reflection questions for personal or group discussion.

Claire Mitchell’s website has links to her books and articles.

Rachel Mann is a poet, theologian, broadcaster, and Anglican priest, who, since 2023, has served as Archdeacon of Salford and Bolton. She has published two collections of poetry: her first, A Kingdom of Love (Carcanet, 2019) was highly commended in the Forward Prizes for Poetry. The areas covered by her work include theology, cultural history, and heavy metal music; she’s also written a book of reflections for Lent based on the works of Jane Austen. Rachel has appeared as a panellist on the BBC Radio 4 programmes The Moral Maze and Beyond Belief, and is a regular contributor to Thought For The Day. Her second poetry collection Eleanor Among the Saints was published by Carcanet at the start of 2024.

As always, you can download a full transcript and discussion questions here.

Our fourth episode is an interview with Professor Anthony Reddie who considers Britishness, Belonging and Brexit through a Black Liberationist Theological point of view. Incorporating stories of his working class upbringing in Bradford, his parents' part of the Windrush generation, and his interest in both theology and history, this interview is wide ranging and informative.

As always we have provided a full transcript and some reflection questions for your personal or group use.

Copies of Prof Anthony Reddie’s book Theologising Brexit will be available in paperback from March 31st 2021 from Routledge. A link to his academic pages at Oxford is here.

Host Pádraig Ó Tuama interviews Rev. Dr. Johnston McMaster, who has spent decades - both as an ordained minister and as a writer and lecturer - considering the overlap between politics, history and religion in the divided loyalties on both sides of the border in Ireland.

Full copies of the transcript — together with four reflection questions for groups or individuals — can be found through this link.

Copies of Johnson McMaster’s new book on the Churches and Partition can be found by contacting the publisher, The Junction, through this link.

For episode 2 of the Corrymeela Podcast, host Pádraig Ó Tuama talks with the poet Gail McConnell, whose forthcoming collection The Sun Is Open considers an archive-box of her father’s writings, clippings, poems and pamphlets. He was murdered by the IRA in 1984. Gail also speaks about creaturely poetry, parenthood, living with loss, and identity. Full transcript of the conversation, and group discussion questions are all available here. Gail McConnell teaches at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University in Belfast. The collection of poetry discussed — The Sun Is Open — will be released by Penned in the Margins in the Autumn of 2021.

On this episode of the Corrymeela Podcast, host Pádraig Ó Tuama talks homeplace, religion, British-Irish politics, and leadership with former President of Ireland, Dr. Mary McAleese. This episode is filled with story, insight and the complicated art of compromise and negotiation. You can download the discussion question and episode transcript here. President McAleese’s memoir Here’s the Story is published by Penguin.

Host Pádraig Ó Tuama gives a preview of season 1 of the Corrymeela Podcast, a season considering Irishness and Britishness in 2021: a year with Covid; a year marking the centenary of the partition of Ireland; and the first year of Brexit. For all our interviews, we asked our guests some 'Very Short Story Questions' - questions you might want to ask yourself, or people you know. You can find these questions here. (We don't broadcast all the answers the guest gives to these, just one or two.)

Dong Jin Kim is a writer and academic whose research interests are in the areas of peacebuilding, humanitarian and development cooperation, theology, and comparative studies of peace processes. He has collaborated with various humanitarian, development, and peace and reconciliation organisations, including Okedongmu Children in Korea, Korean Sharing Movement, and Corrymeela. Jin was a Senior Research Fellow in Peace and Reconciliation Studies at the Irish School of Ecumenics at Trinity College Dublin. He was a Goodwill Ambassador for Peace on the Korean Peninsula at the South Korean Ministry of Unification from 2020 to 2022. Jin is the author of The Korean Peace Process and Civil Society: Towards Strategic Peacebuilding (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), and co-editor of Reconciling Divided States: Peace Processes in Ireland and Korea (Routledge, 2022, with David Mitchell). 

As always, you can download a full transcript and discussion questions here.

Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in Belfast. She has written three novels, two collections of short stories, and two flash fiction anthologies; her work has also appeared in a number of journals and on BBC Radio 3 and 4. Her second novel, The Fire Starters (Transworld, 2019), won the EU Prize for Literature and was shortlisted for the Dalkey Novel of the Year Award. Her latest short story collection, Quickly, While They Still Have Horses was published by Penguin in April 2024. Jan is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

As always, you can download a full transcript and discussion questions here.

Prof. John Paul Lederach is a conflict transformation practitioner, writer, and academic. He has worked with communities all over the world, in countries including Somalia, Nicaragua, and Nepal. John Paul is the author of more than twenty books including The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (Oxford University Press, 2005), When Blood and Bones Cry Out: Journeys Through the Soundscape of Healing and Reconciliation (University of Queensland Press, 2010), and Reconcile: Confict Transformation for Ordinary Christians (Herald Press, 2014). His writing explores social healing, spirituality, and the role of the arts in conflict transformation. John Paul is Professor Emeritus of International Peacebuilding at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, and a senior fellow at Humanity United.

As always, you can download a full transcript and discussion questions.

Dr. Peter Coleman is a professor of psychology and education at Columbia University, and a renowned expert on constructive conflict resolution, intractable conflict, and sustaining peace. He directs the Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution and is co-executive director of Columbia University’s Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity (AC4). Peter is also the co-creator of the Conflict Intelligence Assessment and the Polarization Detox Challenge. His most recent book, The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization was released by Columbia University Press in 2021.

As always, you can download a full transcript and discussion questions. You can sign up for the Polarization Detox Challenge via this link.

Nóirín Ní Riain is an Irish theologian and recording artist who has performed to audiences all over the world. She specialises in Irish traditional music and Gregorian chant, and has collaborated musically with the monks of Glenstal Abbey in Co. Limerick, where she lived for many years. Nóirín is the author of Theosony: Towards a Theology of Listening (Columba Books, 2011), and the autobiography Listen With the Ear of the Heart (Veritas, 2010). She was ordained as an interfaith minister in 2017, and now presides over ceremonies to mark births, marriages, separations, deaths, and other important milestones. Her book Sacred Rituals: A Simple Book of Everyday Prayer was published by Hachette Books Ireland in 2023.

A full transcript of the episode, along with group discussion questions, is available here.

Lesley Carroll is an ordained Presbyterian minister. She’s held a number of public roles in Northern Ireland, including serving as deputy chief commissioner at the Equality Commission and as an associate member of the Victims and Survivors Forum. In 2006, she was appointed to a member of the Independent Consultative Group on the Past. She has served as the Prisoner Ombudsman for Northern Ireland since 2019.

A full transcript of the episode, along with group discussion questions, is available here.

We revisit interviews with guests who spoke with us about place, movement, migration, identity, and belonging. Included in this compilation are clips from Johnston McMaster, Anthony Reddie, Lia Shimada, and Yousif M. Qasmiyeh, who offered insights from the fields of history, theology, and the arts, as well as sharing personal stories of identity and belonging.

As always, you can download a full transcript and discussion questions here.

In this third of four special compilation episodes, we return to previous guests who spoke with us about language, storytelling, and the past. Included in this episode are Sarah Perry, Sef Townsend, John Paul Lederach, Richard Holloway, and Nóirín Ní Riain.

As always, you can download a full transcript and discussion questions here.

In this last of four special compilation episodes of The Corrymeela Podcast, we revisit interviews with guests who shared their insights on conflict and reconciliation. 

Featured in this episode are Duncan Morrow, Dong Jin Kim, Christine Bell, Juliane Okot Bitek, Peter Coleman, and Marina Cantacuzino, who bring us their thoughts on peace processes, conflict resolution, and the work of forgiveness.

You can find a full transcript and discussion questions here.

We talk to Paul Hutchinson about his life and work. Paul is a mediator, a group facilitator, a therapist and an artist. He spent several years as the centre director of Corrymeela and has written the book “Between The Bells”. He has also produced films including Vacancies which is a reflection on the lives lost during the Troubles.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is a poet with interests in language, violence, power, and religion. He has published poetry, essays, a memoir and works of theology. He led Corrymeela from 2014-2019. He currently lives in the USA, in New York City, where he presents Poetry Unbound, is poet-in-residence with Columbia University’s Conflict and Cooperation Centre, and writes. He has two new books for 2025: Kitchen Hymns (CHEERIO and Copper Canyon Press) and 44 Poems on Being with Each Other (Canongate and WW Norton).

As always, you can download a full transcript and discussion questions here.