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Nearly 30 years after his time at Salzburg Global Seminar, Queen’s University Belfast’s Tony Gallagher still carries lessons from the program with him every day

For father of four daughters Tony Gallagher, his mission has always been clear: build a better world. “The animating force for me was to contribute as best I could to making Northern Ireland a more peaceful, just, and equal society,” the education professor at Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland told Salzburg Global Seminar. “Mainly so that my children would not have to experience the type of world I experienced during my teenage and early adult years.”

Gallagher moved to Belfast, Northern Ireland, as a young boy in 1970 and grew up in a divided society experiencing political violence, unrest, and conflict. Remaining in Belfast, Gallagher completed his studies, from undergraduate to doctorate, at Queen’s University Belfast. He continued to grow in his career at the institution and while serving as a lecturer in educational research, was invited to Salzburg, Austria.

Introduced to Salzburg Global Seminar by Mari Fitzduff, in 1993 he participated in the program, Ethnicity, Cultures and the Making of Nations. Engaging with peers from all over the world, Gallagher found the experience enchanting. “This was my first opportunity to spend intensive days with extraordinary people from such a wide variety of countries,” said Gallagher.

Upon his return home, Gallagher became encouraged about the idea of collaboration as a way of transforming the ways schools in Northern Ireland worked, how they related to one another in local areas, and the communities they were based in. 

“One of the consequences of attending [the program] was to make me think more expansively about what was happening in Northern Ireland and what possible futures we might have,” he said. “Nothing helps you see your own home differently than to see it from far away.”

Much of Gallagher’s research has centered on education in divided societies, particularly in Northern Ireland. “The key for me was to find ways of creating space for dynamic dialogue, the type of speaking and listening that had had such a powerful impact on me during those days in Salzburg,” he said.

From the early 2000s, Gallagher focussed on the development of collaborative school networks. In 2005, he became the head of Queen’s University Belfast’s School of Education and in 2007, created the Northern Ireland Model of Shared Education. This pilot involved students from local areas taking classes in each other’s schools in mixed groups. The program developed an effective model of collaboration between Protestant, Catholic, and integrated schools, as well as highlighted education’s potential role in underpinning peace. The success of this model attracted attention in other countries, with academics, teachers, and policymakers from Lebanon, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Cyprus among the nations who explored ways to adapt the model to work in their settings.

Gallagher continued to adopt new leadership roles along the way; between 2010 and 2015, he served as the university’s pro vice-chancellor and in 2016, he served as the Queen’s University’s School of Social Sciences acting head. In the same year, the Northern Ireland Assembly passed the Shared Education Act, ensuring it became a statutory duty for the education ministry to “encourage, facilitate and support” shared education. Before the COVID-19 lockdown, more than half of the schools in Northern Ireland were in collaborative partnerships. In 2020, Queen’s University Belfast received a Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Further and Higher Education from Prince Charles for their work on shared education.

Gallagher’s time in Salzburg left him with rich discussions, friendships, and ideas to take forward his work. Several elements stick out from the summer days he spent in Salzburg, including the walks, the meals, and the hearing Mozart’s works on the piano.

He has maintained regular contact with his fellow participants Attila Ledenyi, from Budapest, and Amiram Goldblum, a professor of chemistry at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, visiting both of them in their home countries.

“I have never been back to Salzburg, but I have kept in touch with some of the other participants, and the experience continues to act as a source of inspiration in my work,” he said. “It was transformative in opening my eyes to the possibilities of transformative change and the need to learn from as many other places as possible to encourage the development of innovative solutions in my own context.”

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