For Researchers

GPS Tracking

Walking Interviews

Throughout the walk, we sought to explore how different kinds of sectarian (and, in our instance, paramilitary) threat shaped how participants moved through and used the local environment. The goal was to gather as much concrete information as possible about how particular environmental features affected residents’ lived experience of using and moving through their local area. Thus, the interviewers took the opportunity to point out potentially relevant features that were present throughout the journey and explore how residents themselves felt about encountering these aspects en route. At the same time, they remained sensitive to more hidden or subtle landscape features that may have a meaning only for ‘insiders’ to the area.

We present below a sample interview schedule. The order and precise content of the questions varied across interviews, in response to the accounts provided by our participants during their actual walk. However, this schedule captures the core questions and themes that we addressed.

Theme 1: Identity/Visual Markers/Affect

• What does it feel like walking through this area?
• What features of the area make it feel safe? Unsafe?
• What landmarks do you identify with?
• What features of the environment make you feel uncomfortable?
• Are there changes that could be made to the local environment that would allow people to use the area more freely?

Theme 2: Community

• Tell us about the communities which live in close proximity to this area.
• Are there occasions when you have entered areas associated with the other community; if so, tell us about the circumstances? How could you tell you were in an area associated with that community? Did you feel safe?
• When walking around the local area, as we are now doing, do you generally worry about encountering or interacting with members of the other community? What about your own community?
• Are there times when you have altered your routes in order to avoid passing through or close to areas associated with the other community? If yes, tell or show us where this occurred. Do you ever change routes to avoid interacting with members of your own community?
• Are there any areas in your own community you wouldn’t enter? If so, why? Can you indicate any parts of the area that you would regard as equally ‘shared’ by both communities? Do you generally feel safe there? Do you use these kinds of mixed, shared spaces a lot?

Theme 3: Facilities/Access

• Are there local facilities that you would like to access more easily but are worried because they are located in or close to areas associated with the other community? Or are hard to physically access? Can you tell or show us where?
• How do you get to the city centre? How often do you go? Is it a safe and comfortable journey?
• If you had to give the government advice about how to make the local environment into a more open, inclusive space that could be shared by both communities, what would that advice be?

Survey and Questionnaire

Sample

The BMP survey used a non-random sample of 520 participants, gathered via door-to-door recruitment across several key sites in North Belfast. This sample had the following characteristics:

• 246 participants identified as Protestant, 242 as Catholic and as 32 'other'
• Of the primary sample of Catholic and Protestant residents, 196 identified as male, 291 as female and as 1 ‘other’
• There was roughly equal representation of ages from 16 years to 65+ years
• Most participants came from lower socioeconomic brackets in terms of household income, with 40% earning less than £10k and another 28% earning between £10 and £20k

Primary sites for survey participant recruitment in North Belfast

Survey participants were drawn from four key sites:

• Ballysillan and Ligoniel
• Skegoneill
• Ardoyne and Glenbryn
• Tiger's Bay and New Lodge

Key aims and questionnaire

The survey was designed to explore the relationship between social psychological factors such as intergroup contact experiences, strength of group identity and perceived intergroup threat and self-reported attitudes towards activity space segregation, including relevant policy attitudes (notably, attitudes towards government proposals to remove interface barriers between catholic and protestant communities).

The full questionnaire used in our survey is available here and some notes on the nature of our main variables and details on how they were coded is available here.

Publications

Journal Articles

Huck, J., Whyatt, D., Davies, G., Dixon, J., Sturgeon, B., Hocking, B., Jarman, N & Bryan, D. (2023). Fuzzy Bayesian inference for mapping vague and place-based regions: a case study of sectarian territory. International Journal of Geographical Information Science.

Dixon, J., Sturgeon, B., Huck, J., Hocking, B., Jarman, N., Bryan, D., Whyatt, D., Davies, G. & Tredoux, C. (2022). Navigating the divided city: Place identity and the time-geography of segregation. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 101908

Richardson, H. (2021). Stitching a Divided City. Textile, 1-6.

Dixon, J., Tredoux, C., Sturgeon, B., Hocking, B., Davies, G., Huck, J., Jarman, N. & Bryan, D. (2020). ‘When the walls come tumbling down’: The role of intergroup proximity, threat, and contact in shaping attitudes towards the removal of Northern Ireland’s peace walls. British Journal of Social Psychology, 59(4), 922-944

Dixon, J., Tredoux, C., Davies, G., Huck, J., Hocking, B., Sturgeon, B., Whyatt, D., Jarman, N. & Bryan, D. (2020). Parallel lives: Intergroup contact, threat and the segregation of everyday activity spaces. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 118(3), 457–480.

Davies, G. J. Dixon, C. Tredoux, J.D. Whyatt, J. Huck, B. Sturgeon, B. Hocking, N. Jarman and D. Bryan. (2019) Networks of Dis(connection): Mobility practices, tertiary streets and sectarian divisions in north Belfast. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 109:6, 1729-1747

Huck, J.J., Whyatt, J.D. Sturgeon, B., Hocking, B., Davies, G., Dixon, J., Jarman, N. and Bryan, D. (2019). Exploring Segregation and Sharing in a Divided City: a PGIS approach. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 109:1, 223-241.

Hocking, B., Sturgeon, B., Huck, J.J., Whyatt, J.D. Davies, G., Dixon, J., Jarman, N. and Bryan, D. (2019). Negotiating the Ground: ‘Mobilizing’ a Divided Field Site in the Post-Conflict City. Mobilities, 13:6, 876-893.

Book Chapters

Hocking, B., Sturgeon, B., Dixon, J., Jarman, N., Bryan, D., Huck, J., Whyatt, D., & Davies, G. (2019). Place-identity and urban policy: Sharing leisure spaces in the ‘post-conflict’ city. In R. Piazza (Ed.), Discourses of identity in liminal places and spaces (pp.166-192). London: Routledge.

Conference Papers

Huck, J.J., Whyatt, J.D., Dixon, J., Davies, G., Sturgeon, B., Hocking, B., Jarman, N. and Bryan, D. (2021). An Empirical Agent Based Modelling approach to Evaluating Intergroup Contact Theory. In Pinto, N. et al. (2021) European Colloquium on Theoretical and Quantitative Geography 2021 Book of Extended Abstracts. 31-36.

Huck, J.J., Whyatt, J.D., Dixon, J., Davies, G., Sturgeon, B., Hocking, B., Jarman, N. and Bryan, D. (2021). Empirical Agent-Based Modelling for exploring Intergroup Contact in a Segregated Society. In Proceedings of the 29th Geographical Information Science Research UK Conference, Cardiff, UK.

Huck, J.J., Whyatt, D., Davies, G., Hocking, B., Jarman, N., Sturgeon, B., Bryan, D. & Dixon, J. (2018). A Bayesian Approach to ‘Community Belonging’ and Segregation in a Divided City. In: Proceedings of the GIS Research UK 28th Annual Conference, Leicester, UK.

Davies, G., Whyatt, J.D., Huck, J.J., Dixon, J., Hocking, B., Jarman, N., Sturgeon, B., & Bryan, D. (2018) Combining T-communities and GPS tracking to assess the impact of segregation on mobility in Belfast. In: Proceedings of the GIS Research UK 28th Annual Conference, Leicester, UK.

Whyatt, D., Huck, J.J. & Davies, G. (2017). Belfast Mobility Project: Integrating PGIS and GPS to Understand Patterns of Segregation. In: Proceedings of the GIS Research UK 25th Annual Conference, Manchester, UK.

Davies, G., Huck, J.J., Whyatt, D., Hocking, B., Jarman, N., Sturgeon, B., Bryan, D. & Dixon, J. (2017). Belfast Mobility: Extracting Route Information from GPS Tracks. In: Proceedings of the GIS Research UK 25th Annual Conference, Manchester, UK.

Whyatt, J.D., Davies, G., Huck, J.J., Dixon, J., Hocking, B., Jarman, N., Sturgeon, B., & Bryan, D. (2016) Belfast Pathways: Space-Time Analysis of Every Day Activities in a Segregated Environment. In: Proceedings of the GIS Research UK 24th Annual Conference, Greenwich, UK.

Reports

Mobility, Sharing and Segregation in Belfast: Policy Report.

Attitudes and Experiences of Residents of North Belfast to the ‘Other’ Community, Safety, Visual Displays, Peace Walls and Belfast City Centre: Survey Report.