Belfast Project

The Belfast Project, also known as the Boston Tapes or the Boston College Tapes, was an oral history initiative based at Boston College in Massachusetts, United States, aimed at documenting personal experiences of paramilitaries during the Troubles, the armed conflict in Northern Ireland from the 1960s – 1990s. Launched in 2000 and concluding interviews in 2006, the project collected confidential testimonies from Republican and Loyalist participants of the conflict, with releases intended only after their deaths to serve as historical resources.

Directed by journalist Ed Moloney, it involved around 50 interviews, but faced intense scrutiny after subpoenas led to the release of select tapes for criminal investigations. In 2014, Boston College terminated the project and offered to return materials to living participants upon request. The project highlighted ethical dilemmas in oral history, including confidentiality limits and researcher biases.

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