Shifting memory: place, and intra-community struggle 25 years after the Good Friday Agreement

This article examines commemoration at the local level. It draws on research spanning two decades in the Ardoyne community, North Belfast. This novel longitudinal approach tracks memory work in one community ‘post-conflict’. The research shows that memorialisation has shifted somewhat in Ardoyne, with less emphasis on victims’ voice and unresolved justice legacy issues, and more towards ‘ownership’ of republican activist dead and political rivals’ memory counterclaims. The longitudinal lens provides a fascinating insight into evolving intra-community tensions over memory, the struggles between different sets of memory activists, and what is driving memory contestation post Good Friday Agreement (GFA).