Good Friday Agreement Commemoration

Claire Hanna
MLA for South Belfast and SDLP spokesperson on Brexit and Finance

Claire has been MLA for South Belfast since July 2015, having previously served as a Belfast Councillor, first elected in 2011. She is the SDLP spokesperson on Brexit and Finance; and deputy chair of the Assembly Finance Committee, having previously served on the Public Accounts and Environment Committees.

As a City Councillor Claire brought the motion that led to Belfast becoming the first Living Wage council in Ireland, paying a fair wage to all employees. She has also campaigned for City Deals for Northern Ireland and before the Assembly was dissolved this year, had been working on a private member’s bill that would offer legal protection for mothers and babies breastfeeding in public places.

Conor Houston
Director of the Centre for Democracy & Peace Building in Belfast, Northern Ireland

Before becoming programme director, Conor was a consultant with the CDPB, leading on its EU Debate NI Programme. As a solicitor advocate, he represented clients to the Supreme Court of both the UK and Ireland and was involved in many high profile and pioneering cases. He also represented the legal profession on the Executive Board of the European Young Bar Association and on the Council of the Law Society of Northern Ireland.

Conor is a Fellow of the US State Department Rule of Law Programme, Fellow of the British Council Hammamet Conference and was UK National Leader at the Ship for World Young Leaders Conference in Japan. He is currently the inaugural Chairman of the Ireland Funds Young Leaders Belfast chapter and the Governor of the Irish Times Trust.

Finbar Hill
Honorary Consul General Emeritus of Ireland

M. Finbar Hill served as the Honorary Consul General of Ireland from 2000-2017. He was also the Chief of Protocol for the Los Angeles Corps from 2003-2016. In addition to the many professional positions he has held, he has been awarded Irish Man of the Year (1993), the Leadership Award for Alumni and Friends of University College Cork, and an Honorary Degree from the National University of Ireland. 

Dermot Ryan
Associate Professor of English

Dermot Ryan's research focuses on British and Irish literature of the long eighteenth century with a particular emphasis on print culture and postcolonial theory. He is the author of Technologies of Empire: Writing, Imagination, and the Making of Imperial Networks, 1750-1820 (University of Delaware Press, 2013). He has published articles on literature and empire in Studies in Romanticism, Eighteenth-Century Studies, and Études Irlandaises, as well as on the romantic lineages of Karl Marx in SubStance: A Review of Theory and Literary Criticism. In addition, he has co-authored (with Casey Shoop) an essay on David Mitchell’s novel, Cloud Atlas and has an article on Marx and translation forthcoming in Boundary 2.