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International Conference on Global Diplomacy

Global Diplomacy

Photo: © ICRC. Repatriation of American nationals on the Japanese ship «Teia Maru» during WWII in Shanghai.

“Global Diplomacy – A Post-Institutional Approach” is the title of an international conference that took place on August 30-31, 2018, at the Institute for European Global Studies of the University of Basel. The conference sought to move beyond Eurocentric discussions, aiming for a global perspective on diplomacy.

The conference "Global Diplomacy – A Post-Institutional Approach" focused on new and interdisciplinary perspectives of diplomatic research. It brought together historians as well as researchers from the social sciences and related disciplines with an interest in the history of diplomacy, transnational law, and global governance. A main objective of the conference was to challenge the former Eurocentric and state-focused diplomatic history in favor of a global history of diplomacy that takes into account border-crossing entanglements and transnational networks.

The conference consisted of four panels, two roundtable discussions and a digital humanities session with the presentation of the database Swiss-Diplo (see conference program). The participants of the event are affiliated with leading universities around the globe, e.g. Waseda University Tokyo, Columbia University, University of Oxford and the ANU Canberra. Furthermore, experts of Switzerland’s major research institutions were present at the conference. Therefore, it provided unique opportunities for international academic exchange and cooperation.

The conference was organized in the course of the research project A Global History of Swiss Diplomacy, a cooperation between the Institute for European Global Studies of the University of Basel and the research center Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland. The conference was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the Freiwillige Akademische Gesellschaft (FAG) Basel. It took place on August 30-31, 2018, at the Institute for European Global Studies in Basel.

@Europainstitut and @Dodis were live-tweeting from the conference under the hashtag #globaldiplomacy.

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