ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Science Diplomacy and the United Nations: Governing Knowledge through Crisis and Contestation

• In Event: Science Diplomacy: Cooperation, Competition and Crisis 2

English Abstract

Since the establishment of UNESCO in 1945 and the consolidation of multilateral science initiatives in the 1970s, the United Nations has occupied a central position in shaping the norms, languages, and infrastructures of science diplomacy. From early notions of scientific humanism to the global expansion of science diplomacy across the Cold War and post-colonial periods, the UN has historically functioned not only as a platform for cooperation, but as a site where science became politically meaningful and diplomatically actionable. In an age of entangled global crises (or polycrisis), science has become both a currency of influence and a contested terrain in world affairs. Within this context, the United Nations emerges as a privileged space for observing how science and diplomacy interact under systemic stress. Drawing on a mixed-methods analysis of 364 official records from the UN General Assembly’s Fourth Committee (2010–2024), alongside interviews with diplomats and science experts, the study identifies how science is mobilised as a diplomatic resource during moments of disruption. The analysis interprets the UN as both an institutional infrastructure and an epistemic arena of global governance: a space where evidence circulates not merely as technical input, but as a language of authority through which actors negotiate legitimacy, responsibility, and sovereignty. Particular attention is given to the evolving role of
metascience observatories (from early UNESCO initiatives to contemporary data-driven institutes) as entities that generate, quantify, compare, and potentially politicise knowledge itself. By situating current practices within longer-term historical developments, the paper reframes science diplomacy not as a linear instrument of cooperation, but as an adaptive and historically contingent field of contestation in which actors, especially those from the Global South, challenge and navigate epistemic asymmetries.

Author

• Julia Battistuzzi Penachioni, Institute for Advanced Studies (IEA-USP) University of São Paulo