Objectives

The EL-CSID project has the ambition to codify and articulate the relevance of cultural, science and innovation diplomacy for EU external relations as part of a systematic and strategic approach. It aims to identify how the Union and its member states might collectively and individually develop a good institutional and strategic policy environment for extra-regional culture and science diplomacy.

The over-arching objectives of this project are threefold:

To detail and analyse the manner in which the EU operates in the domains of cultural and science diplomacy in the current era; comparing its bilateral and multilateral cultural and science ties with other states, regions, and public and private international organisations.
To examine the degree to which cultural, science and innovation diplomacy can enhance the interests of the EU in the contemporary world order and specifically, to identify:

a) How cultural and science diplomacy can contribute to Europe’s standing as an international actor;

b) Opportunities offered by enhanced coordination and collaboration amongst the EU, its members and their extra-European partners;

c) Constraints, both existing and evolving, posed by economic and socio-political factors affecting the operating environments of both science and cultural diplomacy.
To identify a series of mechanisms/platforms to raise awareness among relevant stakeholders of the importance of science and culture as vehicles for enhancing the EU's external relations. The research will generate both scholarly work and policy-oriented output, which will be disseminated through an extensive and targeted dissemination programme.

Together, these objectives should not only contribute to a strengthening of EU policy towards the use of science, culture and innovation in its wider diplomacy, but also to a deepening of scholarly understanding of diplomacy as an abiding, if changing, institution. To these ends, EL-CSID will marshal an empirical and analytical narrative that will offer practical support to the further development and enhancement of the EU’s science, cultural and innovation diplomacy. It will study the current and future role of science, innovation and cultural diplomacy as a feature of its foreign relations through a program of historical stocktaking and multidisciplinary and cross-national comparative research.