In this book, Dr Yumi Omori, offers a novel approach to studying war and peace by foregrounding motherhood in times of conflict and peace processes from a sociological perspective. Through qualitative research resting on individual and focus group interviews with 55 mothers who had lived through the Northern Ireland conflict, this book examines the gendered nature of coping with conflict and its aftermath in peace processes. Drawing on the idea of everyday life peacebuilding, it discusses how the family is located in the processes of social transformation in conflict-affected societies, and illuminates that mothers play central yet largely unnoticed roles in maintaining and restoring sociability in a conflict-affected society. The book illustrates that mothers have been hidden and underappreciated ‘everyday peacebuilders’, as well as hidden and trivialised victims of the conflict.

YUMI OMORI

Dr Yumi Omori is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest, holding a prestigious Stellenbosch University fellowship. She obtained PhD in Sociology from Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, for her thesis titled ‘Motherhood during and after ‘the Troubles’: The Family as a Space of Everyday Life Peacebuilding’. Originally from Japan, Yumi has extensive experience working, studying and researching in international environments. She holds MA (with Distinction) in Conflict Transformation and Social Justice from Queen’s University Belfast, MA in International Studies and BA in English and Area Studies from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. She is a former Researcher/Adviser at the Embassy of Japan in Dublin, Ireland.

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