Beyond the walls: mapping trauma, memory and identity in Belfast's political murals

Abstract

This thesis, 'Beyond the Walls,' investigates how political murals in Belfast’s (Northern Ireland) most deprived communities shape and reflect local identity amidst the enduring legacy of conflict. Addressing a gap in existing literature that often analyses murals through singular or fragmented lenses, this study develops a cohesive framework to integrate the quantitative reality of mural distribution with the qualitative interpretation of their socio-psychological impact.

The research employs an integrated, concurrent multi-method design, triangulating systematic spatial mapping of mural prevalence across the 20 most deprived areas in Belfast with a qualitative thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with key community stakeholders, all situated within a geographically and thematically bounded ethnographic visual case study. The principal argument posits that murals are not passive backdrops but active agents that function simultaneously as territorial markers, embodiments of collective memory and reinforcers of social identity. This dynamic is conceptualised and validated through a new theoretical model: the 'Trauma-Memory-Identity Cycle'.

Key findings reveal that mural distribution is strategic: Higher density in historically significant loyalist and republican heartlands rather than correlating directly with deprivation levels. This strategic placement creates a 'spatial architecture of identity', demonstrating that a mural's geographical location is inseparable from its psychological function. The study concludes that murals serve a dual role for internal cohesion and external display, particularly for tourism, and that top-down 're-imaging' interventions frequently fail by not addressing these deeply embedded sociopolitical functions. This research contributes empirically through a novel spatial dataset of mural distribution and theoretically by establishing the 'Trauma-Memory-Identity Cycle' as an integrated model for analysing visual culture in post-conflict societies.

Date of Award	Jun 2026
Original language	English
Supervisor	Karen Fleming (Supervisor), Una Convery (Supervisor) & Paul Moore (Supervisor)