Early Medieval Settlement in North County Antrim: the significance of Doonmore and Drumadoon

The excavated north Antrim sites of Doonmore and Drumadoon are compared and attention is drawn to a group of like monuments in the same barony, here termed fortified outcrops. These are argued to be a type influenced by settlements in Argyll and introduced by the Dál Riata to Ulster through ‘counterstream migration’.

Rough Waters, Dark Shadows and Cross-Cutting Winds:the impact of European Union enlargement on Turkey’s EU accession negotiations

For a multiplicity of socio-economic, geo-political, strategic and identity-based reasons, Turkey’s progress towards EU membership is often treated as a sui generis case. Yet although Turkey’s accession negotiations with the European Union (EU) are essentially a bilateral – and often stormy – affair, they take place within a wider and dynamic process of enlargement in which not only can the gloomy – sometimes dark – shadows of past and prospective enlargements be clearly detected, but so too can the often chill winds from ongoing, parallel negotiations with other candidates. How the EU negotiates accession and what it expects from candidates has continued to evolve since the EU began drawing up its framework for negotiations with Turkey ten years ago. This paper charts this evolution by first identifying changes in the light of Croatia’s negotiating experience, the ‘lessons learnt’ by the EU in meeting the challenges of Bulgarian and Romanian accession, the EU’s handling of Iceland’s membership bid and accession negotiations, and the revised approach to negotiating accession evident in the more recent frameworks for accession negotiations with Montenegro and Serbia. The paper then explores the extent to which these changes have impacted on the approach the EU has adopted in framing and progressing accession negotiations with Turkey. In doing so, it questions both the consistency with which the EU’s negotiates accession and the extent to which Turkey’s progress towards EU membership is conditioned by the broader dynamics of EU enlargement as opposed to simply the dynamics within EU-Turkey relations and domestic Turkish reform efforts.

The European Union: Emerging from Crisis?

The Eurozone turmoil might have calmed, but the EU is still trying to free itself from a crisis that has had a dramatic impact on citizens’ economic and social well-being and raised serious questions about the union's future. David Phinnemore reports.

Spatial allocation of material flow analysis in residential developments: a case study of Kildare County, Ireland

Studies of urban metabolism provide important insights for environmental management of cities, but are not widely used in planning practice due to a mismatch of data scale and coverage. This paper introduces the Spatial Allocation of Material Flow Analysis (SAMFA) model as a potential decision support tool aimed as a contribution to overcome some of these difficulties and describes its pilot use at the county level in the Republic of Ireland. The results suggest that SAMFA is capable of identifying hotspots of higher material and energy use to support targeted planning initiatives, while its ability to visualise different policy scenarios supports more effective multi-stakeholder engagement. The paper evaluates this pilot use and sets out how this model can act as an analytical platform for the industrial ecology–spatial planning nexus.

The European Union and Peacebuilding: The Cross-Border Dimension

The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union in 2012 was a reminder of the role of European integration in peacebuilding after the Second World War. For the 'Founding Fathers' of the European integration project, cross-border-cooperation was an integral element in building Europe's peace. Yet, in a Western Europe largely at peace for generations, peacebuilding as a relevant objective for European integration may be questioned. Moreover, the contribution of cross-border cooperation to conflict amelioration may be challenged on the grounds of its overwhelming economic focus. However, enlargement into Central Eastern Europe highlights once again the necessity of a peacebuilding objective for the European Union because of the multitude of real and potential conflicts encompassed within its expanded policy orbit. Drawing on evidence from selected 'borderscapes', this study examines 25 years of European Union cross-border cooperation as conflict amelioration and assesses its prospects in a political climate that emphasises borders as security barriers.