Rotary Scholar concludes year

Rotary Global Scholar 2016/17 Laney Lennox was delighted to report to the Club 18 September 2017 that she had completed her dissertation for her Masters in Conflict Resolution at the George Mitchell Institute, Queens University. She stressed that her involvement with Rotary had given her great experiences attending the Conference and speaking to Clubs and she attended a USA election party last November. She thanked the Club for the support and presented a banner of her sponsoring Rotary Club of South Shreveport.

Laney advised that having done a semester in Belfast whilst studying for her BA in creative writing at Millsaps College, Jackson, Mississippi, she became interested in how Belfast could be used in creative storytelling. Following graduation she spent a year in Galway editing literary reviews but wanted to get back to the conflict and social justice area and applied for her Masters to come back to Belfast through which she has been researching storytelling and how it can be used. This study introduced her to archives and Laney has done an internship in archive filming former prisoners’ experiences in Long Kesh and Armagh Women’s Prisons and is now interested in how archives help in recording the past. She was also delighted to have had a Masterclass with George Mitchell.

She reported that her time in Northern Ireland had had a major influence on her future career choice and that the sort of work she wants is more established in NI than other places so she is applying for jobs hoping to stay and apply her experience.