By Garima Kapil
EMEEN Network had a great opportunity to have a catch-up with award-winning Dr M. Satish Kumar, who has won many accolades throughout the years working in Northern Ireland. One of the most recent being the 2020 Belfast Ambassador’s Award for standout contribution to UK-India relations. Specialised in Indian and South Asian development studies, Dr Kumar is the Director for Internationalisation, School of Natural and Built Environment in Queen’s University of Belfast (QUB). He has an extensive experience of 32 years in the Higher Education sector, and has won the 2014 Queen’s University Belfast Teaching Award, UK. He is a Member Board of Directors of Trócaire, Northern Ireland, and Director Board of Directors of Counselling for All Nations Service (CANS).
Before coming to Northern Ireland in 1999, Dr Kumar was teaching at Cambridge University and was also a fellow at Fitzwilliam college. EMEEN asked Dr Kumar about his journey in Northern Ireland - “I never thought in my wildest dreams that I am going to end up in Northern Ireland. I knew about Northern Ireland in a Peace Conference which was held at Cambridge. So, when I was finally getting ready to go back to India after spending two years as a commonwealth fellow at Cambridge, I had a call from a very senior professor from QUB who was keen to know about my ideas and mentioned about a post in School of Geography and asked if I’ll be interested. I told him I have a full-time job in India and I’m very happy. If it has something to do with India, I will be happy to explore the options available. I went back to India and the job post was advertised after some time. I applied and was shortlisted, further got the job in half an hour. I have been here for 24 years now,” he shared.
Dr Kumar found Northern Ireland very friendly, optimistic, and open for conversations. One of his fondest memories include meeting the American author Mike Davis while he was reading one of his books – City of Quartz, at a pub enjoying a pint of Guinness. But a lot has changed since the time he arrived in Northern Ireland, “Because of the fact the Good Friday Agreement has brought some aspects of equality and employability etc, but the aspects of structural racism and unconscious bias are still very much predominant in a society which was steeped in the Troubles over the period of 50 years or more. So that change is gradual - people are becoming more conscious about it, but it still takes a long time to change a system. Community-wise I have had no problems working and living or communicating and interacting. So, I have that freedom and reach to go across the religious divide, and to be able to communicate without any agenda.”
Dr Satish, who won the India- European Union Global Peace and Friendship Award 2001, for promoting international peace and understanding based on the values of Peace, Education and Culture over the past twenty years for communities in India and in the UK, spoke about the reasons for the changing ethnic diversity in Northern Ireland. “When I first came to QUB from Cambridge, I took a flight from Stansted Airport, a bus from Cambridge to the airport, took a Go airline from Stansted to Belfast. I was the only brown person in the flight. Since then, there is now a complete changeover. The second largest investor in Northern Ireland after America is India. So, we have almost all the top companies' back offices, and it was seen as a gateway to Europe, and it was an exciting time to be in Northern Ireland because of the huge reserve of energy and opportunity. Things have changed quite drastically, South Belfast has changed a lot in term of diversity, and it’s becoming much more inclusive. I think there has been a fair amount of initiatives and efforts to transform the place,” he shared.
Dr Kumar thinks the ethnic minorities can contribute to Northern Ireland’s economy. NI is a changing place, because of its location. The potential for the region is enormous being the fact that it’s connected to the Republic of Ireland, with the United Kingdom, and with the Commonwealth. Northern Ireland has a unique position in terms of development, and also in terms of progressing the demand for entrepreneurship.
Dr M. Satish Kumar's professional profile can be found here: