Darren Colbourne

Darren Colbourne is a PhD researcher in the school for History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queen's University Belfast. He is also associated with The Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Security, Peace, and Justice.

Darren's research focuses on an historical re-evaluation of the People's Democracy, originally a New Left student organisation predicated on civil rights activity which developed into a revolutionary anti-imperial organisation. To better codify and explore this ideological progression and PD's fluid group-identification, he utilizes a comparative, interdisciplinary methodology which draws from historical sociological methods. His dissertation pairs archival and primary source research with constructivist political theory, situating the PD's organizational identification within the domestic Irish context and the international New Left phenomenon more broadly. To accomplish this, he puts the PD into conversation with the experiences of the American Student's for a Democratic Society, highlighting key moments of similarity and difference in their ideological trajectories. He is also interested in historical institutionalism and relational sociology, utilizing those fields to draw linkages between disparate student movements, civil rights activity, and anti-imperial struggles in Europe and the United States.

Darren has two years of teaching experience at the American secondary school level, where he instructed classes in World History and American Literature. He instructs small sections for the Pespectives on Politics Tutorial (Fall 2022) and The Long Road to Black Lives Matter (Spring 2023).

The People's Democracy, the Irish New Left, the American New Left, Constructivism, socialism and the development of leftist thought, University history, mobilization history/theory