Heads Above the Parapet: Personal Motivation and Professional Practice Among Northern Ireland's Community of Grassroots Peace Practitioners

Members of the Northern Ireland’s grassroots peace practitioner community have sustained their careers-long dedication to constructive local engagement across the deep historical divide throughout the decades of The Troubles, the post-agreement era, and up to the present. An exploration of their development as individual practitioners and as a community of practice will contribute to our understanding of grassroots level peace-building. Based on 29 in-depth interviews with Northern Ireland community practitioners we examine why they, with widely differing personalities, capabilities, and backgrounds, came to care deeply about their society, and how their dedication to changing its historical trajectory produced constructive cross-community interactions. Our study applies Parks Daloz et al.’s (1996) developmental dimensions to explain the practitioners’ individual commitments to a common good. It also employs community of practice (CoPs) literature, and Stanton’s (2021) concept of practical wisdom in analyzing the professional practices employed by Northern Ireland’s grassroots peace practitioners.