Dr Catriona Pennell from Exeter University in the UK. Photo: supplied
Dr Catriona Pennell from Exeter University has studied the Irish experience of World War One. She is also an expert in how that war is understood by young people today.
In 1916, Irish rebels tried and failed to force the end of British rule in Ireland, in the ill-fated "Easter Rising" in Dublin. But at Messines just one year later, troops from the predominantly Catholic and republican south of Ireland were fighting side by side with soldiers from the mostly Protestant northern Ireland, who identified as British. Now Messines is the site of a moving monument which not only commemorates Ireland's fallen soldiers but also urges the Irish to honour them today, by living in peace.
