This volume highlights how, for over 30 years, the seemingly irreconcilable divisions between the Protestant and Catholic communities in Northern Ireland has spawned a great deal of quite horrific violence and a total of over 3700 deaths, with the toll of injuries much higher. Given this scale of human suffering, this collection of essays attempts to understand how and why such conflict occurs, and seeks to formulate ways in which it can be overcome. It brings together a number of prestigious research projects into cross-community conflict and reconciliation, funded by the Central Community Relations Unit (CCRU) in Northern Ireland. These have been conducted from within a range of social science disciplines including communication, politics, psychology and sociology.