Sean Nial Farren (born 6 September 1939) is an Irish politician and academic in Northern Ireland.Farren studied at the National University of Ireland, University College Dublin (BA), University of Essex (MA) and the University of Ulster (PhD). He worked as a teacher in Dublin, Switzerland and Sierra Leone before becoming a lecturer at the University of Ulster.Farren contested the Westminster seat of North Antrim as a member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) at the 1979 general election, and stood at each subsequent general election until 2004. Wikipedia