Dr Robin Wilson is editor-in-chief of Social Europe and a long-time consultant to the Council of Europe on intercultural integration. He distilled his accumulated experience in working with the Council of Europe on intercultural integration into a monograph, Meeting the Challenge of Cultural Diversity in Europe: Moving Beyond the Crisis (Edward Elgar, 2018).
He has worked for years with a neighbourhood association in a uniquely mixed Belfast neighbourhood on how it can best manage cultural diversity and has also evaluated the Belfast Friendship Club, set up in 2009 to welcome newcomers to the city, of which he is an active member. He was the founding chair of Horn of Africa People’s Aid Northern Ireland, which works mainly with Somali refugees in Belfast.
He has a particular interest in how sport can be a vehicle for interculturalism, having worked extensively with the two football associations in Ireland (and with Football Against Racism in Europe) and individual clubs on how football in particular can bring people together across ethnic dividing lines.