Research Project

Compromise behind Bars. Long Kesh/Maze, 1976–1998

Between 1976 and 1998, Long Kesh/Maze Prison functioned as a central arena of the Northern Ireland conflict in which state strategies of criminalisation, republican protest and loyalist self-assertion competed within the same physical space. Although the conflict was often portrayed in public as uncompromising, compromises simultaneously became established in the day-to-day life of the prison that were rarely described as such. Existing research on Long Kesh/Maze has examined state control, prisoner protest and counter-public spheres in a nuanced manner, without systematically focusing on the distinction between uncompromising discourse and the practical regulation of conflict. Yet it is precisely here that a key to understanding the transition to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement appears to lie.

This PhD project examines the emergence, stabilisation and transformation of at least three forms of compromise culture under prison conditions, as well as the factors that explain the characteristic distinction between practice and discourse. These include a republican culture of refusal, a state culture of dominance, and a loyalist culture of conditional restraint. The project’s methodology is based on a lexical approach, which reconstructs the vocabulary of conflict regulation, and a material approach, which traces the channels of communication between the inside and outside worlds. The present analysis distinguishes between the period from the abolition of ‘Special Category Status’ and the resulting protests (1976 to the end of the second hunger strike in 1981) and the subsequent development, increasingly characterised by normalisation (up to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998).

As this conflict combines a conflict over interests with moral, epistemic and ontological dimensions – which are usually regarded in conflict research as resistant to compromise – an examination of this constellation also provides an illuminating point of reference for the question of under what conditions compromise can become viable even beyond pure conflict over interests.

Academic Career

Since 04/ 2026: Research Associate / PhD student at the Chair of Social and Economic History, University of Duisburg-Essen/College for Social Sciences and Humanities, UA Ruhr

03/ 2026: Master of Education, thesis topic: ‘Behind Walls, Narratives Emerge: Republican and Loyalist Conflict Identities at Long Kesh/Maze Prison (1976–1983)’ [Original title: “Hinter Mauern entstehen Narrative. Republikanische und loyalistische Konfliktidentitäten im Long Kesh/Maze Prison (1976–1983)”]

2025–2026: Research Assistant at the Chair of Social and Economic History, University of Duisburg-Essen

2023–2026: Master’s degree in History, Anglophone Studies and Educational Sciences (with a teaching qualification option for secondary school) at the University of Duisburg-Essen

09/2023: Bachelor of Arts, thesis topic: ‘Compromise in the Work of Thomas Babington Macaulay. Narratives of Conflict Resolution in British Historiography of the First Half of the 19th Century’ [Original title: “Der Kompromiss bei Thomas Babington Macaulay. Konfliktregulierungsnarrative in der britischen Geschichtsschreibung der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts ”]

2021–2025: Student and research assistant in the ‘Cultures of Compromise’ research network, University of Duisburg-Essen, in cooperation with Ruhr University Bochum and the University of Münster

2018–2023: Bachelor’s degree in History, Anglophone Studies and Educational Sciences (with a teaching qualification option for secondary school) at the University of Duisburg-Essen and the University of East Anglia

Scholarships and Funding

2025: Funding for a research stay in Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the “Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes”

2024–2026: Scholarship holder of the “Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes“

2023: AURORA Exchange Programme (semester abroad at the University of East Anglia, Norwich/UK)

Publications

Wittenbrink, Andrew: Robert Owen in New Lanark, in: Tim Schanetzky (Hg.): Glossar der Kapitalismuskritik (Online), 2025. URL: https://www.krisederkritik.de/glossar/owen.

Schneider, Ute/Bennemann, Nils/Hassenpflug, Benjamin/Olbering, Lisa/Wittenbrink, Andrew: Der Nahe Osten im frühen 20. Jahrhundert. Denkanstöße, University of Duisburg-Essen 2025. URL: https://www.uni-due.de/imperia/md/content/dokumente/2025/2024-01-23-reader-denkanstoesse-naher-osten.pdf.

Research Interests

Conflict and compromise studies

Northern Ireland conflict

20th-century history of the United Kingdom and Ireland

Carceral geography and historical spatial research