The CAIN Associate Programme showcases how CAIN plays an important role in academic research and in the work of policy makers and practitioners. To date, three events have been held. Full details and videos of these events are available on the CAIN website.

22 April 2021: PRONI and CAIN: Using Conflict Archives, with David Huddleston (Head of Records Management, Cataloguing and Access at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland).

5 June 2021: CAIN as a Resource for Research and Teaching The Troubles. This round table presentation was organised by Robert Savage (Boston University) as part of the 2021 American Conference for Irish Studies.


6 October 2021: Conflict Textiles and CAIN: Learning the Language of Textiles, with Roberta Bacic (curator of the International Conflict Textiles collection).

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The Dementia in the Minds of Characters and Readers project held a Dementia Fiction Festival on 15-16 September. This two-day event celebrated the wealth of new fiction depicting dementia, exploring the issues raised around ethics, diversity, empathy and care. As well as performances of new writing, the festival featured a series of workshops, panel discussions and keynote talks from researchers, creative writers, and people living and working with dementia.

Videos from the Festival are now available online.

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This new Research Update, by Gladys Ganiel and Chris Morris, uses data from the 2020 Northern Ireland Life and Times survey to explore how people practised religion 'virtually' during the pandemic by accessing services on the internet, TV or radio.

ARK produces a range of publications, including Research Updates and fact sheets. Most of these are available online. For a full list of publications, as well as links, visit our Publications section.

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The Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study (NILS) is a wide-ranging database of people and their major life events, stretching back decades. Census information for 1981 to 2011 is linked with other administrative datasets such as vital events, school data, property information, health card registrations, weather and pollution amongst others.

A joint NILS-ARK event on 14 September explored the potential of NILS for COVID research. This interactive workshop provided an overview of the readily available data, the topic areas which can be rapidly explored, and the feasibility of linkage with health data. A video of the event is now available, along with other useful resources.

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ARK is a joint initiative between Queen's University and the University of Ulster, and began in 2000. Our mission is to make social science knowledge on Northern Ireland easily accessible to the widest possible audience. Find out more at www.ark.ac.uk.

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