Dr. Ciara Fitzpatrick:

Basically, I was invited to write a paper for the ARINS project, which is funded by the Royal Irish Academy. It was at that point that I realised there has not been a lot of open conversation between academics interested in social security in the North and the South. I sent an email around to all of the academics I could find who are working on these issues across multiple disciplines, whether that be law, social policy, sociology, politics or history, and invited them to become involved. Approximately 15 of us are to meet in May in Dublin and it is at that initial meeting that we are going to set out what we want to achieve, how we are going to operate, how we might expand and how we might engage others in the research that we are doing.