Professor Brigittine French Receives Fulbright Alumni Grant for Research in Northern Ireland
Twelve years ago, Anthropology Professor and Vice President of Global Education Brigittine French was teaching and conducting research in Ireland as a Fulbright Fellow, building connections with staff and faculty at Dublin City University (DCU).
Fast forward to 2024, and she is set to visit Nothern Ireland with a Fulbright Alumni grant to conduct a new research project titled “Remembering U.S African American Civil Rights Struggle in Northern Ireland: Lessons for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.”
The project, which will examine how the United States Civil Rights Movement is remembered in Northern Ireland today, will enlist two collaborators she met from her first experience in Dublin as a Fulbright fellow. Together, they will interview local Civil Rights movement leaders in Belfast and Derry/Londonderry in Northern Ireland.
“My work as an anthropologist has to do with memory in the context of violence, and how individual memories are shared among social groups,” explains French. “Memories especially become salient in times of intensity, such as in times of conflict, grief, or celebration.”
Inspired by her first book — which dealt with moments of political violence during el conflicto interno armado (civil war) and el genocidio (genocide) in Guatemala — French began exploring how times of political conflict in Northern Ireland impacted the country’s collective memories. Her research about the country’s violence and democracy in the 1930s post-civil war would eventually become the basis of her second book and lay the groundwork for her Fulbright Alumni grant research this upcoming summer.
A Trip to Northern Ireland
As part of her anthropology seminar, Collective Memory in Anthropological Perspective, French and her students visited Northern Ireland to further explore these concepts of collective memory. She invited Marc Reed, Grinnell’s vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion and chief diversity officer, to be a co-faculty leader of the trip. This summer, he will also join her collaborators at DCU as they review and collect research. “He was often thinking about Northern Ireland in the context of the black experience in the United States,” recalls French.
Throughout their trip, French and her students encountered murals upon murals referencing Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights struggle.
“Mark and my students were really taken by how Northern Ireland used the United States’ framework of civil rights in the early 1960s — which was around the same time the Civil Rights movement was happening down here in the [American] South,” says French.
“Civil Rights leaders in Northern Ireland, who were white Catholics, were asking for civil rights from Irish Protestants at the time. From the distance, it reads as simply a religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants, but the conflict stems from the Protestant Irish arriving through a colonial project — to ‘civilize’ Northern Ireland.”
Ultimately, French hopes to use her Fulbright Alumni grant to not only reflect on the concepts of violence and equality within Northern Ireland but to inform ways of approaching inclusion and equity issues within both Irish and American institutions.
About the Fulbright Alumni Grant
The Fulbright Alumni Grant will help support a 5-day workshop that explores how Northern Ireland remembers the American Civil Rights Movement and investigates how these collective memories can inform diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in American and Irish universities.
The Fulbright Alumni grant will support both faculty and staff at Grinnell College and Dublin City University: Professor Brigittine French, assistant vice president for global education (Grinnell); Professor Agnes Maillot, head of school, (DCU); Marc Reed, vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion and chief diversity officer (Grinnell); and Fiona Murphy, program chair for MA in refugee integration (DCU). At the end of their research trip, French and her team will outline key findings and plan next steps, including completing grant applications and professional presentations.
