Cahal McLaughlin

Cahal McLaughlin is Chair of Film Studies at Queen’s University Belfast, Director of the Prisons Memory Archive and director of the Centre for Documentary Research at QUB. As a documentary filmmaker, he has engaged with methods of how we might address the legacy of conflicted pasts in ways that acknowledge the vulnerability of our memories and the contested nature of our narratives. His films include “Armagh Stories: Voices from the Gaol” (2015), on the female prison during the Troubles in the North of Ireland, “We Never Give Up II” (2012), on reparations in South Africa, and two films with Siobhán Wills: “It Stays With You: use of force by UN peacekeepers in Haiti” (2018), and “Right Now I Want to Scream: Police and Army Killings in Rio – The Brazil Haiti Connection” (2020). His publications include Recording Memories from Political Conflict: a filmmaker’s journey (2010, Intellect Ltd), and “Who Tells What to Whom and How: the Prisons Memory Archive.” In his forthcoming book, Documentary Film as Participatory Practice in Conflict Situations (Anthem Press), McLaughlin addresses the need to create platforms for survivors of political violence to tell their stories in order to challenge marginalizing narratives and as a form of public and personal healing.

Bio created January 2022