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Author: Building Bridges For Peace

Professor Lynne Cameron and Simon Weatherbed with participants of the Empathy dynamics Workshop.
Workshop on Empathy

Workshop on Empathy

We were very happy to contribute to a 5 day programme looking at the Empathy Dynamics in Conflict Transformation. The project was the inspiration of Dr Lynne Cameron who is a Professor in Linguistics and analysed the metaphor in our language back in 2002. She started a project ‘Living with Uncertainty- Metaphor and the Dynamics of Empathy in Discourse’ in 2006 and now partners with Birmingham-based NGO Responding to Conflict. The workshop was part of a ongoing project to create…

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The Healing Power of a Handshake

The Healing Power of a Handshake

Forgiveness in Northern Ireland Jo Berry – 30 June 2012 The politics of that handshake between the Queen and Martin McGuinness hide an intensely personal drama: he was once a leader of the group that killed her cousin, Lord Mountbatten. Here, the daughter of another IRA victim reflects on her journey to forgiveness and reconciliation I  made a personal decision just two days after an IRA bomb killed my lovely father, Sir Anthony Berry, to bring something positive out of the…

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Jo Berry and Pat Magee visit Israel and Palestine

Jo Berry and Pat Magee visit Israel and Palestine

In April Pat Magee and Jo Berry went to Israel and Palestine for a 8 days speaking tour. It was a huge success with a mixture of talks and workshops, visiting projects and many meetings. “We spoke to some groups which were just Israeli, some just Palestinian and some with participants from both communities. We also spoke to a leading newspaper and a internet media and we were told that,   ‘I’m pretty confident we’ve reached tens of thousands Israelis, possibly hundreds of thousands…

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Love Thy Enemy – Article in the Huffington Post by David Miles

Love Thy Enemy – Article in the Huffington Post by David Miles

Sir Anthony Berry was killed in the Irish Republican Army’s bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton in 1984. His daughter Jo talks about her friendship with the man convicted of the attack and why she thinks empathy can make a difference. When confronted with the heart wrenching reality of conflict there are some individuals who, in their search for understanding, want more than the comforting truths provided by national, cultural or familial bonds. In Peter Beinart’s powerful new book,…

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