Professor Patricia Lundy

Overview

Patricia Lundy is a Professor of sociology. She studied as an undergraduate and postgraduate at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB); in 1993 she received her PhD.

In 2016, Patricia was awarded a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship. She was the recipient of a British Academy Senior Research Fellowship in 2009/2010 and has received other grants from prestigious funding bodies including the Nuffield Foundation, Irish Academy and British Academy. Her research has also been funded by Community Relations Council, Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and European Union’s Peace funding.

Patricia's research has focused on post-conflict transformation, mechanisms for ‘dealing with the past’, ‘truth’ recovery and the politics of memory. She has researched both community-based ‘truth’ recovery processes and official police-led historical conflict-related inquiries. Her in-depth study of the Police Service Northern Ireland’s, Historical Enquiries Team achieved considerable media coverage and impact and  has been widely regarded in changing the landscape in dealing with the past in NI.

Her most recent work is a major empirical study of historic child abuse. She is committed to ‘bottom-up’ participatory approaches and a desire to ensure that survivors needs drive the form that redress takes. In this regard, Patricia was instrumental in working with survivor groups to set up a panel of experts on Redress. In collaboration with Professor Kathleen Mahoney (Calgary University), she has published a number of practical and policy relevant reports designed to assist redressing historic child abuse; including a framework for compensation. She is committed to linking academia to the wider community and strives to make her research impact positively on beneficiaries.

Patricia's work has been published in a wide range of peer-reviewed academic journals including Sociology, Law and Society, International Journal of Transitional Justice, Law and Social Challenges and Contemporary Social Science.

Latest Publications

Patricia Lundy (2020), Through the lens of survivors: Lessons from the Northern Ireland Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry, Briefing Paper, Feb 2020 - Read the publication