United over conflict

The universities of Exeter, Cambridge and Queen's Belfast are to unite in a five-year project to help alleviate conflict. Using the examples of Belfast and Jerusalem, the study will examine cities in conflict where the states are contested. The Economic Social Research Council has awarded more than £3 million for the work, led by Wendy Pullan of the department of architecture at Cambridge University. Mick Dumper, associate professor in Middle East politics at Exeter University, said: "We are studying cities that have been subject to a range of conflicts and violence but that have also used ways to manage and transform that conflict." The research aimed not to identify ways to remove or resolve conflict, he said, but to identify ways in which it is "expressed and absorbed by the urban form, and how that can be changed".