Sensing the Troubles: A Critical Reimaging of Life in Northern Ireland

This project uses sensory history to unlock alternative narratives of the Northern Irish Troubles. A methodology which focuses on the intersections between sight, sound, smell, taste and touch disrupts the existing political history and compiles a complex sensory and affective landscape, allowing hidden stories of lived experience to emerge. During the Troubles the commonplace and the extraordinary were often intertwined yet no one has written a history of everyday life during the conflict. The key contribution of this project is that it captures the almost forgotten aspects of ordinary life through the use of an innovative, interdisciplinary approach.

Sensing Troubles aims to write a different history of conflict. It uses sight, sound. smell, taste and touch to construct stories of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.