(What I Did With My Story)   

(Areas of Research Work and Engagement)

Based in Dundalk, County at the tail end of the Troubles, my lived experiences of the paramilitary group, the Provisional IRA's change in their positioning, responses and identity to that of a political party, has been the impetus for my self-initiated volunteer national security research in London.

As change is never a linear journey, what was the paramilitary group, the PIRA had to contend with how communities in Dundalk and beyond understood  who and what they now attested to as their new identity, and how that reconciled with their identity as a paramilitary group. And my experiences in Dundalk also include the then PIRA, the Garda Síochána, and MI5  working in tandem to provide safe passage for me from Dundalk to Dublin when some erroneously thought I worked for the British government.

Once back in  Chicago,  I found myself fixated on the PIRA's continued journey toward a political identity.  That interest led to me respectfully commenting online to  their choice of words that in my opinion reflected an identity they sought to discarded.

Already, a frequent traveler to  London, I found my lived experiences in Dundalk to also be the catalyst for researching the UK's internal national security mode.  And the United Kingdom's  participation in the invasion of Iraq led to an uptick in acts of terrorism in the UK. Resuming my travels to the United Kingdom. I now traveled to London three to four times a year where I researched how the internal national security model in London led by SO15 and MI5 responded to the increase in radicalization of some some British nationals.  And I sought to garner an understanding of  both the adaptability and resilience  of the UK's internal national security model.

In my volunteer role I interviewed a wide array of  British nationals on their understanding and experiences of the UK's internal national security model. This included interviewing British Muslims  on how they understood and/or experienced the the model.   I also interviewed members and supporters of proscribed groups, foreign intelligence officers based in London embassies, and civil society's organizations focused on national security.  I then submitted my unsolicited work to initially the Home Secretary, and eventually to the SO15 officer upon arrival in the United Kingdom at Heathrow Airport. 

In more recent years I have also researched  the internal national security models in Canada, composed of CSIS and the RCMP) whilst based in Canada for several years.  And in 1917 I traveled to Israel for a few months where I again engaged in independent research looking at the  Israel's Shin Bet (Shabak).