Developing a New Framework for Understanding the Role of Cultural Products in Cultural Diplomacy

States often undertake 'cultural diplomacy' to improve their image with foreign populations and further their foreign policy aims. This can involve the promotion of cultural products abroad, such as literature, art, film, theatre and so on. States have traditionally been willing to invest considerable sums of money in such activity. Furthermore, following a recent period of greater willingness to resort to military intervention in order to further foreign policy aims (e.g. Iraq and Afghanistan), many governments are now considering again how they might influence other countries without resorting to military means.

International Relations experts have talked about cultural exchange in terms of exerting 'soft power' over other countries and their populations. However, such research has not adequately taken into account how cultural products promoted as part of cultural diplomacy are received abroad and how foreign audiences engage with those products. This project aims to developin new methodologies for understanding this process. It seeks to develop those methodologies by bringing together specialists in Cultural Studies with researchers in International Relations. Cultural Studies has long been interested in questions of reception and the interaction of audiences with the cultural products they encounter. In this sense, International Relations can learn from Cultural Studies by applying Cultural Studies theories to its study of cultural diplomacy. Equally, however, Cultural Studies researchers have not traditionally found it easy to adapt their approaches to address questions of importance to policymakers in the field of cultural diplomacy.

By facilitating an interaction between researchers from International Relations and Cultural Studies, the value of both disciplines to policymakers in this area will be enhanced. The project will also provide the theoretical underpinning for the development of future research, which will focus on the practical application of insights from Cultural Studies in the field of cultural diplomacy.

This project is designed to develop a new theoretical framework which will allow experts in the field of cultural diplomacy to offer better-founded and more useful advice to policymakers in the future. Although there is an established literature on cultural diplomacy written by specialists in International Relations, it tends not to take account of relevant theoretical insights from Cultural Studies, which restricts the usefulness of that literature and the advice scholars are able to offer when they draw on it. Improving the quality of this advice has the potential to ensure a better-targeted use of resources and better outcomes for cultural diplomacy, but these impacts have to be grounded in this initial development of an appropriate theoretical framework.

This project prepares the way for further collaboration with non-academic partners and policymakers, not only by providing the new theoretical synthesis described above, but also by offering training to the researchers involved in how best to engage with policymakers on these issues (workshop 2).

Furthermore, the involvement of the project partner, the Insitute for Cultural Diplomacy (ICD) in Berlin, will allow for the dissemination of the findings of the project to new non-academic partners who can then be brought on board for future research. The ICD has an extensive network of contacts in the world of cultural diplomacy beyond academia and is the organiser of regular international events which engage with issues around cultural diplomacy. Dissemination of the project's findings through the ICD's networks will be invaluable in terms of guaging end-user reaction to the project's findings, which can then be incorporated into the formulation of further research plans. This dissemination will also be facilitated by the project's own website.