Projects
Humans Huddle
Humans Huddle investigates how networks can change the odds of individuals and organisations achieving desired outcomes.
In a world of connections Humans Huddle; whether to shelter, trade, and live or in terms of networks with clusters around ideas and spaces.
What does this mean to me?
Networks influence success in;
- Government and policy
- Commerce and industry
- Charities and fund raising
- Lobbying and NGO activity
Humans Huddle seeks to understand that influence on behaviour and develop ways to represent network data in ways that are accessible to those that need to make decisions on the basis of that information.
Collaborative Public Diplomacy
Public diplomacy takes place in complex multi-hub, multi-directional networks. Within these networks diplomacy is a process of dynamic and ongoing negotiation between interlocutors. The analysis of these negotiated relationships extends recent scholarship in relational, multilateral and networked approaches to communication and the role of sub-state groups in diplomacy. Ultimately, each interaction between members of a network has the potential to change the odds of a particular outcome occurring.
During the early cold war the complex relationship between communities in Europe and the United States was of concern to individuals on both sides of the Atlantic. Using archival research and recorded interviews, this project charts the development of American Studies in Europe during that period. An academic discipline focused on studying America was one opportunity to strengthen the relationship between Europe and the US. This study shows the negotiation within the network of relationships between the State, philanthropic foundations and European scholars. It identifies together factors shown through the narrative to enable or inhibit successful collaborative public diplomacy.
The Trials of Engagement: The Future of US Public Diplomacy
In the last decade public diplomacy has become one of the most important concepts in the development and implementation of foreign policy. Trials of Engagement: The Future of US Public Diplomacy with contributors from leading scholars in disciplines from international relations to communications, considers the challenges for this ‘new’ public diplomacy, especially as it is pursued by the US Government. It highlights the challenges of aligning policy and projection, overcoming bureaucratic tensions, and the language used by public diplomats. Most importantly, the volume illustrates that the issues for public diplomacy are more than those of a producer seeking to win the hearts and minds of passive ‘audiences’.
Trials of Engagement portrays public diplomacy as an increasingly public project. To overcome the trials of engagement, public diplomacy must provide more than a rhetorical nod to a “twoway” process. Ultimately, a collaborative public diplomacy must be built on a broad understanding of those involved, the recognition of stakeholders as peers, and effective interaction with networks made up of traditional and new interlocutors.
The Playbook
Based on contributions from an international network of practitioners and academics this large scale project has been initiated to collate experience in Cultural Relations and Public Diplomacy practice from around the world. It draws together past and present experience, and recognises the importance of recording programmes that were both successful and unsuccessful, to facilitate the sharing of that experience and good practice. This will provide examples upon which practitioners can draw in designing programmes in the future as well as create a resource for education about the discipline.
