The Global Diplomacy network was officially launched in May 2021, yet its origins go back several years further. In December 2016, Lisa Hellman and Birgit Tremml-Werner hosted the first international conference on Intercultural Diplomacy (funded by the Swedish Riksbankens Jubileumsfond and the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia) to discuss questions about diplomatic practices, translation and terminology.

Having participated in discussions about the role of diplomacy and related topics in Japan and China, where historiographical debate of premodern diplomatic practices differed from those in Europe at the time, we had started questioning to what extent modern concepts were applicable to foreign relations of the past, in particular such that focused on encounters between actors from different diplomatic systems. Surprised by how little of Asian research entered discussions in New Diplomatic History thriving in Germany, the UK, and slowly entering the field of Islamic Studies, Birgit and Lisa decided to bring representatives of the different research traditions into dialogue. The conference, which has been described as “eye-opening” by its participants, laid the foundations for some of the pathbreaking publications resulting from network collaboration.

Around the same time, Guido van Meersbergen organised a workshop at the University of Warwick with the comparable aim of working “Towards a Global History of Early Modern Diplomatic Exchange”. Having joined forces, we planned the new network’s first appearance at the New Diplomatic History Conference in Middelburg and our second conference in December 2018 in Venice (funded by the University of Warwick) which focused on Gifts and Tribute in early modern Afro-Eurasia.

Since then, GDN has organized conferences biannually. In December 2020, an online conference gathered scholars working on diplomatic relations in Southeast Asia to discuss actors, practices, and translations across different cultural and linguistic spheres in Southeast Asia. In 2022, a conference was held at the Swedish Centre for Advanced Studies in Uppsala on the theme of “Communicating Diplomacy”. Participants engaged in conversations about how oral, written, and material communication acts have constituted arenas of strife and conscious misunderstanding, as well as arenas for commensurability and the negotiation of new practices.

In June 2023 GDN organised its first summer school in collaboration with Leiden University and the N. W. Posthumus Institute. Twelve PhD students in diplomatic history introduced their research and explored together with leading network members the concept of socioeconomic diplomacy in the context of global empire building (16th-19th centuries).

The GDN Research Seminar

Twice per term, GDN members and invited speakers gather for an online seminar to discuss methodological and historiographical questions arising from current research.

As part of the GDN’s mission to foster collaborative research, we organize writing seminars where we workshop work in progress.