ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Science Diplomacy: Cooperation, Competition and Crisis 1

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

Fifteen years after the Royal Society and AAAS first defined science diplomacy (2010), both organisations have returned to the subject to reassess its role amid ongoing geopolitical upheaval. In an era marked by plural worldviews and contested scientific authority, they, alongside actors such as the European Commission, have acknowledged that science diplomacy has too often been framed through an overly optimistic lens that privileges cooperation while downplaying enduring realities of contestation, competition, and crisis. Moments of geopolitical disruption reveal not only the necessity of scientific cooperation but also its fragility, exposing asymmetries of power, divergent national priorities, and tensions embedded within transnational scientific exchange.
This symposium examines how science diplomacy has operated historically across shifting geopolitical landscapes: from the power dynamics and national interests that shaped scientific internationalism in the pre-WWII era (Session 1), to the historic roles and limits of international organisations in mediating scientific cooperation (Session 2), to the diplomatic trajectories of East Asia (Session 3), and finally to historical cases, contemporary challenges and ongoing lessons (Session 4). Together, the panels foreground how diplomatic discourse intersects with national priorities, scientific authority, and global power struggles, illuminating the plural worldviews, perspectives and interests that have shaped scientific engagement.
By combining deep historical perspectives with contemporary conceptual shifts, this four-panel symposium offers a comprehensive reconsideration of science diplomacy as a site of negotiation, competition, and adaptation. It highlights how crises, whether geopolitical, social, or technological, expose the power dynamics embedded in international scientific engagement across more than two centuries.

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Alice Naisbitt, University of Manchester

Individual Presentations

• Reframing science and diplomacy in times of disruption - Daniel Gamito-Marques, NOVA School of Science and Technology, Lisbon, Portugal; Lif Lund Jacobsen, Danish Arctic Institute

• Science diplomacy at the dawn of global public health: the Conseil Sanitaire Maritime et Quarantinaire (CSMQ) in Alexandria - Mauro Capocci, University of Pisa

• The Birth of Scientific Pan-Americanism: The First Pan-American Scientific Congress of 1908-9 - Diego Hurtado-Torres, Universidad San Sebastián, Santiago, Chile.

• Scientific Internationalism under National Agendas: The German Hindu Kush Expedition (1935) and the Politics of Crop Origins - Johannes Mattes, Austrian Academy of Sciences

Session Organizers

• Daniel Gamito-Marques, NOVA School of Science and Technology, Lisbon, Portugal

• Lif Lund Jacobsen, Danish Arctic Institute