Diplomacy Situated: Settings, Personas, Practices
The 5th conference of the network for New Diplomatic History, scheduled for the spring of 2023 at the University of Turku, will mark the 10th anniversary of the inaugural NDH conference held at Leiden in 2013 (https://newdiplomatichistory.org).
This event will be dedicated to the study of situated diplomacy. We will consider the settings in which and through which diplomacy has been incarnated throughout history, involving sites (real, virtual, fictional), practices, and personas. Each meeting organised by the network has demonstrated the breadth and depth of the study of diplomacy across disciplines and periodisations, and NDH5Turku2023 aims to continue this trend.
The theme chosen for this conference will gather research dealing with diplomacy as a rooted, situated activity. Diplomacy and diplomats operate in places, such as embassies to ministries, but also in social and cultural milieus, in traditions, in social norms and legal rules. They develop practices that form the organizational principles of their fluid activities. These elements form a stage-setting that plays an important part in the diplomatic process. Participants to the conference are asked to consider these elements, their role in diplomacy, their evolution, and the state of research today.
The goal of this 5th conference will also be to continue the efforts of previous meetings to broaden the scope of new diplomatic history. It welcomes global perspectives originating from outside the Euro-American sphere, to explore the inter-cultural dimensions of diplomatic contacts across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and how diplomatic norms have been adapted to context-specific settings and practices.
We received proposals for panels or contributions on a wide variety of subjects, chronological periods and geographical areas, for whcih we are very grateful. You will find the programme on this page, and we will update it regularly.
The conference will be organized around groups of panels, each day starting with a keynote presentation. The keynotes will be delivered by Lecturer Deepak Nair (Thursday), Professor Laurence Badel (Friday) and Prof Lorenz Lüthi (Saturday).
The conference will also hold a seminar on publishing opportunities for studies in diplomacy.
The conference will be held on site. The goal is to have as many participants as possible on site, but presenters will also be able to participate remotely using the technical possibilities offered by the University of Turku. The platform we will use is Zoom. Each conference room as well as the keynotes will get their own Zoom link, through which remote participants will be able to access the debates and participate.
To avoid any security issues, the Zoom links will be sent to participants on their email ahead of the conference and will not appear on this website. If you haven’t received the links by the week of the conference, please be in touch and ask.
The organisers would be grateful if you could promote the conference and the network to a wider audience. While on social media, please use the conference’s tag #NDH5Turku2023. On Twitter, remember to tag the NDH: @NDH_Network
Abstracts will be published online ahead of the conference. Participants will be asked to provide their panel’s discussant with a written version of their presentation to serve as a basis for comments.
If you have anything to ask before or during the conference, please feel free to get in touch: ndhTurku2023@gmail.com
If you have anything to ask on a short notice during the three days of the conference, call me: +358 (0)408252371
Information about Turku and the university may be found here and on the other pages of this website:
Thank you in advance, and let’s meet in Turku!
Louis Clerc, 30 November 2022
Kuva: UN Photo