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 aroun…

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 Soc…

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 …

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 Sharin…

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 shortl…

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…

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 Consorti…

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 Listen…

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 serve…

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…

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 Brit…

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 Lea…

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 gro…

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 in…

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, Conflic…

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 f…

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 t…

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, 2…

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 Haywa…

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 …

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 …

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, …

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 al…

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 fin…

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 Agreem…

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…

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.By The Corrymeela Podcast

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 …

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 wi…

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 gr…

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. Fu…

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.…

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…