John Bell, Ulf Hansson and Nick McCaffery
October 2010
Community Relations Council
In October 2009 the Institute for Conflict Research and Achieve Enterprises were
commissioned by the Community Relations Council to undertake research into the ways in
which history is taught to young people in Northern Ireland, how and where young people
learn about the past, and to explore what they knew of both recent and earlier historical
events. The research project, entitled ‘The Impact of Division and Conflict in the Past on Young
People’, which ran between November 2009 and April 2010, involved surveying the views of
958 young people who were accessed through a range of schools, colleges, universities and
youth organisations, and focus group discussions with 238 young people in twelve locations
across Northern Ireland which enabled the researchers to explore some of the themes and
issues in more detail.