About
Research
Email: mike.mecham@stmarys.ac.uk
Biography
For many years Mike Mecham was a UK representative in various international bodies, including the EU and the UN. He also had lead responsibilities for promoting UK trade with Eastern European and Latin American countries.
In the 1980s, Mike was a Principal Lecturer in Public Administration at the Civil Service Staff College. He lectured, ran courses and organised seminars for senior civil servants. Later he was a visiting lecturer on Latin America at Koç University, Istanbul. From 2014-2016 he lectured on Irish labour history on the MA (Irish Studies) programme at St Mary’s University. He has a number of publications to his name on Latin America and Irish labour history.
Research
Research profile
From 2000-2006, Mike Mecham was the founding Director of the Latin America Programme at Chatham House, London. This involved research in the fields of human rights, economic development, conflict resolution and refugees in the region.
To direct his work, he completed research for an LLM (International Law) Distinction and MA (Refugee Studies) Distinction.
He was also a founding member of the EU funded European Union-Latin America Observatory, a collaborative research project involving institutions from Europe and Latin America.
From 2012 until 2017 Mike Mecham conducted research at St Mary’s University on the Irish labour movement, leading to the award of a doctorate in 2018 on the Belfast labour leader William Walker. His thesis was published by Umiskin Press of Dublin in 2019. He is continuing his research in this field and has been co-opted onto the Executive Committee of the Society for the Study of Labour History (SSLH), representing Irish labour history interests.
Mike Mecham is a member of the SSLH, the British Association for Irish Studies and the Irish Labour History Society.