Workshop: Politics of Diplomatic Training

Thursday 14th - Friday 15th September 2023, King’s College London (hybrid)

Programme (all times GMT+1)

Thursday 14th September

12.30 - 13.00 Arrival, Welcome and Outline of Workshop Programme

13.00 - 14.00 Lunch

14.00 - 16.00 Panel 1 - Pedagogies of Diplomacy (Chair: Jonathan Harris)

  • Senior Lecturer in Defence & International Affairs, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst; Visiting Fellow, Institute for Diplomacy and International Governance, Loughborough University London

    Senior Lecturer in Communication and Applied Behavioural Science

    The Pedagogy of Defence Diplomacy – Analysing the Diplomatic Training of British Defence Attachés

    The British Army’s International, Communications and Engagement Plan emphasises the importance of international engagement and related communication. With an increasing focus on deploying military personnel not in traditional combat roles, but for international engagement, training, and support, the question how military personnel is trained in diplomatic skills and knowledge becomes increasingly relevant. This paper explores this issue by analysing the training received by Defence Attachés. It maps out the diplomatic training delivered to British Defence Attachés and explores the pedagogies of that training. The purpose of the paper is to investigate how diplomatic knowledge and skills are produced, transmitted, assessed, and evaluated, in order to identify potential gaps and lessons learned for the wider military.

  • Coordinating Director, Foreign Service Institute of Ghana

  • Associate Professor of Political Science and Africana Studies, Vassar College

    Diplomatic Fictions and Literary Training

  • Professor of World Politics, School of Oriental and African Studies

16.00 - 16.30 Refreshments

16.30 - 18.30 Panel 2 - Change in Diplomatic Training (Chair: Ruth Craggs)

  • Professor of Political Geography, University of Oxford

    Research Associate, King’s College London

    Tracing Diplomatic Tutelage

    Through the twentieth century, colonies emerged from the so-called tutelage of European imperial powers, to represent themselves as sovereign states within the international community. One consequence of this change was an expansion in overseas diplomatic training, as hundreds of novice diplomats travelled to attend bespoke programs. This paper interrogates the pedagogical and (geo)political practice of tutelage – where guardianship and instruction are held in tension – in order to shine a critical spotlight on programs hosted in Britain, France and Switzerland, that offered training to African diplomats. We explore practices and relations of tutelage both within the diplomatic training context (between students and trainers), and at a broader scale, understanding tutelage as operating through enduring international dependencies proceeding from the European empires and the Cold War. We trace the legacies of colonialism within these training programs but are also attentive to ways in which African diplomats-in-training actively resisted and overcame constraints placed upon them by the institutions in which they received training, and the ways trainers adapted course content, and problematized the generalizability of their pedagogy, knowledge and practice. In dialogue with scholarship on socialization and international education, we draw out the temporalities, relationality and power dynamics that underpin tutelage as a practice. In doing so, we critically examine the value of tutelage as a concept in international politics which can highlight both the normative power and potentially disruptive role of pedagogy in negotiating the politics of postcolonial diplomacy.

  • Professor of Political Science, Winston-Salem State University

    Diplomatic Training in Africa, 1976 to 1990

    This paper is about my experience as Visiting Lecturer at the Institute of International Relations of Cameroon/IRIC in Yaounde, Cameroon (1976 to 1984) and at the Diplomacy Training Program/DTP (later renamed Institute of Diplomacy & International Studies/IDIS, University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya (1984 to 1990). While at IRIC-Yaounde, I was on secondment from Frances’s Ministry of Cooperation; at DTP-Nairobi, I was on secondment from France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Both IRIC & the DTP were designed as bi-lingual, pan-African training institutions, hosting students from across the African continent. They were also designed as bi-lingual (English & French) training institutions. In actuality, while IRIC’s student body was truly pan-African and operated as a genuinely bi-lingual institution, the DTP’s only non-Kenyan students usually hailed from neighboring Uganda, Rwanda & Burundi. Furthermore, the DTP never became really bi-lingual, English remaining the only language of instruction. In both institutions, the faculty was truly international. At IRIC, In addition to the Director and one permanent Cameroonian faculty and a number of adjuncts, two faculty members—including the Director of Studies—hailed from Switzerland, one from France and one from Sierra-Leone. At the DTP, in addition to the Kenyan Director and a number of Kenyan adjunct faculty, one faculty was from Switzerland and another from France.

    Both institutions were characterized by a truly pan-African outlook, spirit and mindset in spite of the fact that about half of the student body at IRIC was Cameroonian, while it was predominantly Kenyan at the DTP. Both institutions demonstrated the problems and obstacles in creating and sustaining truly pan-African diplomatic training institutions, as in both cases the tendency was to nationalize those institutions over time.

  • Professor of Contemporary History, Université de Paris 1 (Sorbonne)

    Development of diplomatic training in Europe

    The presentation will address the question from a European historical perspective, reflecting on the plurality of Europe in terms of diplomatic training.

    It will do this along 4 lines:

    1. Diplomatic training, a controversial issue in Europe

    2. Heterogeneous training according to national traditions (C19th-1945)

    3. Rethinking diplomatic training during the Cold War

    4. Shaping a European diplomat

  • Director, Oxford University Diplomatic Studies Programme

18.30 - 21.00 Drinks and Dinner

Friday 15th September

09.00 - 11.00 Panel 3 - Socialisation Through Training (Chair: Fiona McConnell)

  • Director, Oxford University Diplomatic Studies Programme

    A Constructivist perspective on the role of Diplomatic Training within International Society

    Scholars are understandably wary of the nebulous ontology conjured up by the notion of diplomatic training. Its inter-disciplinary scope (inter alia straddling education, public administration, development, political geography, history, IR, diplomacy and foreign policy) can complicate the demarcation of a research project or syllabus. However, the burgeoning worldwide practice of diplomatic training begs more academic scrutiny. This paper will investigate the extent to which constructivism – a paradigm that lends itself to interdisciplinary use – can be used as an analytical tool in the study of diplomatic training. Constructivism is a post-positivist addition to the IR toolkit, and its utility lies in the ability to account for inter-subjective constructs that are driven by evolving norms, identities and interests. In the case of diplomatic training this is important, because diplomacy is a foundation of a major inter-subjective construct: international society. Training to perpetuate the institutions and practice of diplomacy is therefore integral to the socialisation that occurs within international society.

    However, in a deeply fractured world, ideas of what that society is or should be, are not universal. In some cases, diplomatic training can have the subtext of a mandate to transform or contest institutions of international society, such as international law. Even without such a revisionist end-goal, diplomats are trained to represent the unique identities and promote the interests of entities with foreign policy agendas that are often mutually exclusive. This paper will investigate the divergent aims of diplomatic training, and the extent to which it contributes to coherence and/or fault-lines within international society.

  • Director, Clingendael Academy

    Trends and developments in diplomacy and the impact on diplomatic training

    • Analyzing contemporary trends in diplomacy as a tool of foreign policy

    • Analyzing contemporary trends on diplomacy as a professional job

    • How these trends relate to the training of diplomats

    • How the consequences look like on the didactical methodology in diplomatic training

    • What the implications are to design interactive based professional diplomatic training

  • Assistant Professor of International Security, Goethe University

    Envoys of diplomacy? On the tension between diplomacy and socialization in international diplomatic training

    In this chapter, I explore a central tension in international diplomatic training. Experienced diplomats who teach diplomats from other – usually less powerful – states engage in two modes of representation at once. On the one hand, they represent their state, its people, and its interests. In this sense, diplomatic training is a particular form of diplomacy and as such mediates difference without attempting to overcome or transcend it (Der Derian 1987; Sharp 2009). In spaces of international diplomatic training, representatives of different polities come together, learn about each other's views, and explore possibilities for coexisting in difference. On the other hand, diplomatic trainers also represent diplomacy as a profession and practice to their "young colleagues," as they are often called irrespective of their age in these settings. While diplomatic relationships are horizontal, at least in a formal sense, these teaching and mentoring relationships are hierarchical. Participants do not exchange views on their respective visions of diplomacy, but rather those with authoritative knowledge of the practice teach those who are new to the field – both as individual practitioners and collectively in cases where they represent a polity that has only recently acquired official statehood and the right to practice official diplomacy. The relationship between master and apprentice here is distinctly undiplomatic, the aim is not co-existence at “an arm’s length” (Sharp 2009, 90), but to assimilate the other into the world of diplomacy.

    Drawing on participant observation of training programs for diplomats from Kosovo and in-depth interviews, I show how this tension reproduces a particular imaginary of international politics and forms individual and collective subjects of a particular kind. My theoretical ambition is to bring into conversation recent literatures on diplomacy as a profession (Adler-Nissen and Eggeling 2022; Constantinou, Cornago, and McConnell 2016; Kuus 2018) and postcolonial critiques of diplomacy as a violent and exclusionary practice (Datta-Ray 2015; Opondo 2016), and to show that diplomacy does indeed grant agency to those invited to participate in it, but always on terms that are not fully their own.

  • Lecturer in International Relations, Australian National University

11.00 - 11.30 Refreshments

11.30-13.30 Panel 4 - Practising diplomatic training (Chair: Ruth Craggs)

  • Professor in Applied Diplomacy, DePaul University

    Learning internationalism: New thinking about diplomatic training

    To account for the past, keep up with the times and prepare for the future, sovereign states need to think beyond a unidimensional, professional conception of diplomatic training that tends to promote a national ‘geopolitical identity’ (Müller, 2011: 1). Rather, states should embrace a multidimensional, cross-professional conception involving different pedagogies and skills that promises to form an ‘internationalist-minded’ outlook, in state conduct (Gilmore, 2022: 20). On the empirical assumption that professional diplomatic education and training programs are expanding worldwide, the chapter will explore, first, whether aspiring and actual state-based diplomats can ‘learn’ (or be ‘taught’) internationalism in pedagogical settings (e.g., Baylon, 2016) as distinct from ‘socialised’ experiences such as international conferencing (Legg et al., 2021) and bilateral postings (Bull, 2002; Essex and Bowman, 2022). Second, the chapter will consider the potential and limits of innovative informal training networks and pedagogical approaches such as transprofessional diplomacy (Constantinou, Cornago, and McConnell, 2016). And third, the chapter will consider the significance of two alternative conceptions of the ‘international’: pluralist good international citizenship (Evans 2022) and solidarist good international statehood (Gilmore, 2022).

    These concepts offer potential alternatives to dominant Western, state-centric narratives, such as the liberal rules-based international order (Ikenberry, 2022) and they also offer meaningful responses to non-Western critiques of those narratives, such as postcolonialism (Opondo, 2016; Akopari, 2016; Afro-Asian Networks Research Collective, 2018; Spies, 2018; Huda and Muchatuta, 2022; Biswas, 2022).

  • Director, University of Nairobi Department for Diplomacy and International Studies

    Sites and Space of Diplomatic Training in Kenya: Department of Diplomacy and International Studies (DDIS)

    In Kenya diplomacy training was seen as a key component of management of foreign policy and diplomatic service with a view to cultivate, nurture, establish, maintain and retain Kenya's diplomatic presence and effective representation in international standing and engagements. This necessitated the establishment of the Diplomatic Training Program at the University of Nairobi in 1973 specializing in the training of Diplomats and Conflict managers. As the need for higher levels of diplomatic and international studies increased, it was found necessary to transform the diplomacy program into a full-fledged Institute. The Institute of Diplomacy and International Studies was established in 1989, by a statute under the University of Nairobi act and later transformed into the Department of Diplomacy and International Studies (DDIS). Diplomacy training in the Department is guided by philosophical conviction that Foreign Service of Kenya must change through long-term continuous trainings, workshops, seminars simulations and retreats that will always refresh, update, re-orient and equip the knowledge reservoirs of the foreign service officers to be abreast, and adequately represent and manage the dynamism and complexity of the international diplomatic scene. DDIS has established partnerships and collaborations with various local, regional, and international institutions. It maintains relationships with government ministries and parastatals, universities, think tanks, and research centers. Through these collaborations, DDIS organizes training programs, workshops, and seminars for diplomats, government officials, and professionals in the field. Its most notable collaboration has been with the National Defense College (NDC) and Defense Staff College (DSC) since 2002. Through these collaborations, the department has for more than two (2) decades offered academic and research training to NDC and DSC which host government and military officials not only from Kenya, but other parts of the continent and international partner states.

  • Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Nottingham Trent University ; Senior Research Associate SARChI Chair in African Diplomacy and Foreign Policy, University of Johannesburg

    Professor of French and European Studies; Director, Institute for Diplomacy and International Governance, Loughborough University London

    From Art to Discipline: the evolution of the pedagogy of Diplomacy in UK higher education

    The ‘art’, or practice of diplomacy, has a long pedigree in the conduct of international relations. Yet as an area of academic study it has languished behind other disciplines. While International Relations developed as a field of study in Higher Education (HE) from the early 1900s, the inclusion of Diplomacy as a course is a more recent phenomenon. This follows a proliferation of academic literature on the theory and practice of diplomacy from the 1990s. While the subject itself has attracted a growing scholarship, there is little analysis on what prompted this academic ‘turn’, and how the subject has developed in terms of its pedagogic practice. Given that at the start of 2023, the option of studying Diplomacy as an academic subject has grown to encompass over 20 courses across UK universities, points to the needs for further discussion on the development of the discipline. The argument made by Chandramohan and Rycroft (2018) that the inclusion of Diplomacy in HE curricula means that is has acquired the features of an academic discipline, papers over questions on whether Diplomacy is indeed considered an academic discipline, and by who. For while diplomacy is implied in the UK HE quality benchmark for International Relations (QAA), as the conduct of international relations, it is never explicitly discussed.

    Through a critical review of the academic literature on the pedagogy of Diplomacy and the examination of the curricula of the academic courses offered in the UK, this article considers the emergence of Diplomacy as a field of study, teaching, and learning within HE. Given the proliferation of courses in the UK, and the interest expressed in these by domestic and international students, this case study presents an important first step in building an understanding of the pedagogy of Diplomacy; uncovering its philosophical, political, and ideological drivers. This study provides the necessary context for further comparative regional studies as we move our understanding forward on the pedagogy of Diplomacy.

  • Lecturer of Global Affairs, Yale-NUS College, Singapore

13.30 - 14.30 Lunch

14.30-15.30 Conclusions, next steps, roundtable (Chair: Fiona McConnell)

Organising Team

  • Reader in Political and Historical Geography, King’s College London

  • Professor in Political Geography, University of Oxford

  • Research Associate in Postcolonial Diplomacy, King’s College London