Ulster University is planning to offer some additional courses at its Magee campus — including one that caused uproar when it was uprooted and moved to Belfast.
Peace and Conflict Studies and INCORE (International Conflict Research Institute) were synonymous with Derry as the city where the civil rights movement began.
The city was also home to key architect of the Good Friday Agreement, John Hume, and IRA leader turned peace negotiator Martin McGuinness.
Ulster University created the John Hume and Thomas P. O’Neill Chair in Peace in Derry as part of INCORE “in line with strategic priorities”.
Magee expansion to 10,000 students will require ‘sustained intervention’ of £700m
When the Masters course in Peace and Conflict Studies was moved from Derry to Belfast in 2017, veteran civil rights activist Eamonn McCann said it “made no sense” as it was recruiting well at Magee.
Now, it has emerged there are plans to once again offer the programme at Magee on a date yet to be confirmed.
UU said half of the INCORE staff team are based at Magee and it will soon be advertising for a new and additional position of Director of INCORE, in the coming weeks.
It has also emerged that sociology programmes are going to be offered in Derry, along with politics programmes.
These courses will all be duplicated, meaning they will be offered at UU’s Belfast and Derry campuses.
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An Ulster University spokesperson said: “To support our ambitions for growth on our Derry~Londonderry campus we are adding some sociology and politics undergraduate programmes from 2025.
“These are additional to the courses offered in Belfast, they are not moving from one campus to another.”
SDLP Foyle MP Colum Eastwood said that given Derry’s links with the civil rights movement and the rich history of peacemakers like John Hume the Masters course should “never have been moved out of Derry in the first place”. He continued: “There can be no better place to study peace and conflict than a city that has lived through those dark times to become a shared city which stands as a model for reconciliation.
“It’s welcome that Ulster University are offering more courses around sociology and politics at Magee and creating new jobs in the process.”
The Derry University Group was more critical describing it as a “half-baked solution”, which is “designed to feed Belfast and not Derry”. A spokesperson added: “It does however, reinforce two key arguments, made by the Royal Irish Academy in 2021 and again this year, namely: UU is never able to do the right thing by Derry as it has too many competing priorities across its campuses; and secondly, there is an immediate need for an independent oversight commission for universities in the North, such as exists in the South and in Britain. In years gone by, UU’s policy was ‘incubate, replicate and eradicate’ — i.e. develop new courses in Magee, copy them in Jordanstown or Coleraine if they work, and then close them down in Derry.
“This latest move is nowhere near good enough. The theft of INCORE to Belfast — which many have described as Derry’s Elgin Marbles moment — hasn’t been undone here. Belfast is still claiming Magee’s unique selling point as its own.”