On Friday 20 November, 2020, IACES held a one-day online conference exploring the past, present and European future of Ireland's Ports, Coastal Communities and Maritime Sector. Bringing together academics, experts and stakeholders across three roundtable discussions, this online conference explored the key role played by Ireland’s ports, coastal communities and maritime sector in its membership of the EU; provided a forum in which to interrogate the issues confronting Ireland’s port and coastal communities as a result of Brexit, climate change and the coronavirus pandemic; and, crucially, highlighted how responses to these challenges are framed and influenced by Ireland’s EU membership. The event was supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's Communicating Europe Initiative.

IACES hosted a webinar on Dr Huw Bennett's latest book on Wednesday, 31 Jan 2024. Chaired by IACES President, Dr Giada Lagana (Leverhulme ECR Fellow at Cardiff University), it explores how Uncivil War reveals the full story of how the British army acted to save Great Britain from disaster during the most violent phase of the Northern Ireland conflict. Huw Bennett's study shows how the army's ambivalent response to loyalist violence undermined the prospects for peace and heightened Catholic distrust in the state. British strategy consistently underestimated community defense as a reason for people joining or supporting the IRA whilst senior commanders allowed the army to turn in on itself, hardening soldiers to the suffering of ordinary people. By 1975 military strategists considered the conflict unresolvable: the army could not convince Catholics or Protestants that it was there to protect them and settled instead for an unending war. Discussants are Dr Thomas Leahy (Cardiff University and author of The intelligence war against the IRA); and Dr Eleanor Leah Williams (Oxford University).

On Friday 20 November, 2020, IACES held a one-day online conference exploring the past, present and European future of Ireland's Ports, Coastal Communities and Maritime Sector. Bringing together academics, experts and stakeholders across three roundtable discussions, this online conference explored the key role played by Ireland’s ports, coastal communities and maritime sector in its membership of the EU; provided a forum in which to interrogate the issues confronting Ireland’s port and coastal communities as a result of Brexit, climate change and the coronavirus pandemic; and, crucially, highlighted how responses to these challenges are framed and influenced by Ireland’s EU membership. The event was supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's Communicating Europe Initiative.

On Friday 20 November, 2020, IACES held a one-day online conference exploring the past, present and European future of Ireland's Ports, Coastal Communities and Maritime Sector. Bringing together academics, experts and stakeholders across three roundtable discussions, this online conference explored the key role played by Ireland’s ports, coastal communities and maritime sector in its membership of the EU; provided a forum in which to interrogate the issues confronting Ireland’s port and coastal communities as a result of Brexit, climate change and the coronavirus pandemic; and, crucially, highlighted how responses to these challenges are framed and influenced by Ireland’s EU membership. The event was supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's Communicating Europe Initiative.

IACES-UACES Seminar: The Island of Ireland After Five Decades of EU Membership This is a recording of the joint IACES-UACES seminar held in Press Club Brussels on 25 May 2023 with Richard Corbett (Vice Chair of UK European Movement and also Chair in the European Parliament of the Labour Movement for Europe), Dr Michael Holmes (Associate Professor of Political Science at ESPOL), Dr Giada Lagana (Lecturer in Politics at Cardiff University, President of IACES), and Prof. Daniel Mulhall (Served for 44 years in Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs including in some of its most senior positions in Dublin and overseas) with support from the Welsh Higher Education Brussels (WHEB) and the Wales Governance Centre (WGC) at Cardiff University.

“The EU's Westphalian Mirage and Ireland's Security Coma” by Professor Ben Tonra Professor Tonra, Ireland's leading scholar on European and Irish foreign, security and defence policy, and recipient of the 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award in European Studies, addresses the topic of “The EU's Westphalian Mirage and Ireland's Security Coma”. Ireland and the European Union are foundationally committed to multilateralism, the rule of law and the so-called Liberal World Order. Their respective political and economic successes have also been largely grounded in globalisation. Both are facing a crisis with respect to a more contested world order in which geopolitics and military hard power play a much higher role. Respectively, however, each is responding very differently to these changing circumstances. The EU rhetorically pursues a more geopolitical strategy and seeks to speak 'the language of power' in ways which are arguably ill suited to its nature and its constitutional foundations. For its part, Ireland continues to grapple with taking security seriously, failing even to aspire to a capacity for independent defence. The lecture seeks to understand these contrasts, place them in a contemporary European context and identify pathways which might escape both the Union's mirage and Ireland's coma.

“The EU's Westphalian Mirage and Ireland's Security Coma” by Professor Ben Tonra Professor Tonra, Ireland's leading scholar on European and Irish foreign, security and defence policy, and recipient of the 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award in European Studies, addresses the topic of “The EU's Westphalian Mirage and Ireland's Security Coma”. Ireland and the European Union are foundationally committed to multilateralism, the rule of law and the so-called Liberal World Order. Their respective political and economic successes have also been largely grounded in globalisation. Both are facing a crisis with respect to a more contested world order in which geopolitics and military hard power play a much higher role. Respectively, however, each is responding very differently to these changing circumstances. The EU rhetorically pursues a more geopolitical strategy and seeks to speak 'the language of power' in ways which are arguably ill suited to its nature and its constitutional foundations. For its part, Ireland continues to grapple with taking security seriously, failing even to aspire to a capacity for independent defence. The lecture seeks to understand these contrasts, place them in a contemporary European context and identify pathways which might escape both the Union's mirage and Ireland's coma.