B ELFAST is notorious for conflict. However, a series of cease fires called in 1994 that were institutionalized by the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 created a new normality in Belfast that is only rarely disturbed by outbreaks of violence. And indeed, the thousands of tourists who are now again populating the streets of Belfast see hardly any sign of conflict. I was in some kind of a tourist mode myself when I began my new job at Queen’s University, Belfast in April 2005. I was thrilled by some of the Victorian and Edwardian architecture, impressed by the regeneration efforts around the former Gasworks site, astonished by the thriving shopping scene and student culture, awed by the largest ongoing commercial construction project in Europe, the Victoria Square development in the heart of the city, and blown away by the scale and ambition of the redevelopment in the Titanic Quarter. In other words, Belfast had become simply a normal European city with aspirations to compete in the global market.

And yet, I noticed that I was in the capital of the “troubles”(a term that denotes the phase of massive violent conflict beginning in 1969) when I tried to store my luggage for a few hours at the central bus station:“No luggage-lockers, sir; not in Belfast.” The old fear of bombs might have vanished, but the artifactual manifestation of conflict lags behind the new reality; the reality at the surface, to be precise, because closer inspection reveals