25 May 2026 (Monday), 16:30-17:30 JST
IDEC Large Conference Room (in-person only)
About the Lecture
Peacebuilding has long been a concern for social scientists, urban planners, and communityminded citizens. Yet there is broad agreement that contemporary peacebuilding scholarship would benefit from more theoretically informed organisational research into the institutions and systems involved in designing, managing, and sustaining peace in ethnically dividedsocieties.
This lecture bridges History and Political Science with metagovernance theory to analyse the strategic role played by élite-level bureaucrats in building and sustaining peace under conditions of territorial contestation and institutional fragility, drawing on the Northern Ireland peace process.
Building on this framework, the lecture examines how peace was governed in the years leading up to the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. It shows how British and Irish civil servants moved beyond policy implementation to actively shape the procedural, relational, and institutional architectures through which compromise could emerge. Based on archival research and elite interviews, these officials are conceptualised as metagovernors who structured negotiation spaces, managed trust across jurisdictions, and sustained institutional continuity during moments of political rupture.
The findings introduce the concept of structures of continuity and identify the core features of adaptive metagovernance as a functional, technocratic approach to peacebuilding. By foregrounding procedural design, institutional memory, and bureaucratic coordination, thelecture offers insights of relevance to both scholars and practitioners concerned with governance, institutional resilience, and conflict transformation in divided societies.
About the Speaker
Dr. Giada Lagana is currently a Lecturer in Politics at Cardiff University in the School of Law and Politics (LAWPL), where she has worked since 2019 in a variety of research and teaching roles before being appointed to a permanent position in 2025. Between 2023 and 2026, she held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship from The Leverhulme Trust, which supported her research on socio-spatial governance between the island of Ireland and the United Kingdom.
Her academic trajectory has been both international and interdisciplinary. She earned a BA (magna cum laude) in Italian and History from University of Pavia, followed by an MA in International Relations from Université de La Rochelle, and a PhD in Political Science from University of Galway. Alongside her research training, she has also developed expertise in higher education pedagogy. She is a Cardiff University Education Fellow, having completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Academic Practice at the University of Galway, and she also holds the DAEFLE professional qualification for teaching French as a foreign language from Université de La Rochelle. Her research focuses on conflict management, peacebuilding, governance, and European integration, with particular expertise on Northern Ireland. Her work has been supported by several national and international funders and has included visiting research and teaching positions in Germany, France, Ireland, and Denmark, as well as in Japan from 2026.
Dr. Lagana is also actively involved in academic networks and scholarly leadership. She currently serves as President of the Irish Association for Contemporary European Studies (IACES), where she coordinates an Erasmus+ Jean Monnet Activities Support to Institutions and Associations grant administered through the European Commission. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (UK). Her first book, The European Union and the Northern Ireland Peace Process (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), examines the European Union’s role in conflict resolution and peacebuilding in Northern Ireland. Her second book, currently under contract with Oxford University Press, explores the role of civil servants in conflict management and peacebuilding in Northern Ireland. Alongside these monographs, she has published extensively on Irish politics, cross-border cooperation, and metagovernance.
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