18 Facts About Paul Bew

Paul Bew has worked at Queen's University Belfast since 1979, and is currently Professor of Irish Politics, a position he has held since 1991.

Paul Bew studied for his BA and PhD at Pembroke College, Cambridge.

Paul Bew acted as a historical advisor to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry between 1998 and 2001.

Paul Bew was involved in the Belfast Project, a Boston College initiative to record interviews with former participants in the Troubles, including former republican and loyalist paramilitaries.

In 2014, Gerry Adams criticised Paul Bew's handling of the Boston College project, as well as the journalist Ed Moloney and the former IRA volunteer Anthony McIntyre.

Adams claimed Paul Bew had deliberately chosen Moloney and McIntyre because they were unsympathetic to Adams.

Paul Bew expressed regret over the closure of the project, and stated further oral history projects of the Troubles were now "under a cloud".

Paul Bew was briefly a member of a group called the British and Irish Communist Organisation, which advocated the two nations theory of Northern Ireland.

Paul Bew was a member of the Workers' Party, then known as Official Sinn Fein.

Paul Bew is a unionist, and in 2019 called for the British government to do more to champion the union and recommended introducing a Department of the Union.

Paul Bew served as an "informal adviser" to David Trimble.

Trimble and Paul Bew are both signatories to the statement of principles of the Henry Jackson Society, which has been characterised as a neoconservative organisation.

In 2007, Paul Bew was selected by the independent House of Lords Appointments Commission to be made a member of the House of Lords.

Paul Bew was created Baron Bew, of Donegore in the County of Antrim on 26 March 2007, and sits in the House of Lords as a crossbencher.

Paul Bew made his maiden speech on 23 July 2007 during a debate on political donations in Northern Ireland.

Lord Paul Bew was Chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, an advisory non-departmental public body of the United Kingdom Government, from September 2013 to August 2018.

Paul Bew was succeeded by Baroness Deech on 26 October 2023.

Paul Bew is married to Greta Jones, a history professor at the University of Ulster, with whom he has one son, John Paul Bew, who is professor of history at the Department of War Studies, King's College London.