Here you can browse an assortment of publications on science diplomacy, compiled by the Alliance team as we come across them.
Publications by InsSciDE, S4D4C and EL-CSID are not included here. Click here to find resources by the projects.
In Praise of a Historical Storytelling Approach in Science Education
In the 1970s and 1980s, the use of history of science in science education was controversial. In the three last decades attitudes have changed, but the question of best practice has not been definitively answered: What type of historical knowledge should be incorporated in pedagogical contexts, and how? This essay ...
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Friends in fission: US–Brazil relations and the global stresses of atomic energy, 1945–1955
This article considers a relatively unknown episode in the early Cold War that involved the US and Brazil, as well as a number of other countries. From 1950, the leading figure in Brazil's nuclear effort, Admiral Álvaro Alberto, established amicable connections with the representatives of other nations in order to ...
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On the road to Stockholm: A case study of the failure of Cold War international environmental initiatives (Prague Symposium, 1971)
In May 1971, the Czechoslovak capital hosted an international conference on the environment that brought together high-ranking government officials and scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain. The idea to organize such an event reflected Czechoslovakia's interest in environmental planning and was one of the main outcomes of the ...
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A Matter of Courtesy: The Role of Soviet Diplomacy and Soviet “System Safeguards” in Maintaining Soviet Influence on Czechoslovak Science before and after 1968
In 1969, a few short months after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, Sergei I. Prasolov, advisor to the Soviet Ambassador in Prague, informed František Šorm, President of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, at a formal meeting that he welcomed Šorm's suggestion to intensify scientific exchange between Czechoslovakia and the ...
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Science for Competition among Powers: Geographical Knowledge, Colonial‐Diplomatic Networks, and the Scramble for Africa
Historical studies on the relationship between science and diplomacy tend to focus on events since World War II and on initiatives for the maintenance of peace or to achieve cooperation over contentious matters. This article presents the case of José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage (1823–1907), a Portuguese zoologist who had ...
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Global resilience through knowledge-based cooperation: a new Protocol for Science Diplomacy
Aukes E.; Wilsdon J.; Ordóñez-Matamoros G.; and Kuhlmann S. (2021): Global resilience through knowledge-based cooperation: a new Protocol for Science Diplomacy. F1000Research 2021, 10:827 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.55199.1) Global resilience through knowledge-based cooperation: a new Protocol for Science Diplomacy Abstract The world is currently dealing with one of the most severe health, economic ...
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Diplomats in Science Diplomacy: Promoting Scientific and Technological Collaboration in International Relations
Open Access Lif Lund Jacobsen, Doubravka Olšáková 11 December 2020 https://doi.org/10.1002/bewi.202080402 ...
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A nuclear monument the size of a football field: The diplomatic construction of soil nuclearity in the Palomares accident (Spain, 1966)
On April 8, 1966, 4,808 barrels—208.2 L each—were buried at Savannah River nuclear cemetery in Aiken, South Carolina. They contained about 1,100 tons of radioactive contaminated soil and vegetation from Palomares, a village on the South Coast of Spain. Earlier that year, about 9 kg of plutonium had been scattered over Palomares ...
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The scientific object and material diplomacy: The shipment of radioisotopes from the United States to Japan in 1950
This paper asks how a scientific object functions in a diplomatic context by examining the distribution of radioisotopes by the United States to Japan in 1950. In particular, it aims to shed light on some material dimensions of the diplomatic roles that a scientific object can play. With diplomacy as ...
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The seismograph as a diplomatic object: The Soviet–American exchange of instruments, 1958–1964
Scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain met in Geneva in 1958 and 1959 to create the technical basis for monitoring a future nuclear test ban treaty. Despite their scientific veneer, these meetings were politically motivated and the scientists tried to forward U.S. or Soviet objectives through their technical ...
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Orphaned atoms: The first Moroccan reactor and the frameworks of nuclear diplomacy
This article examines the attempt by the Kingdom of Morocco—a country of pivotal geopolitical importance in the late 1970s and early 1980s—to secure a research reactor. It finds that by treating that reactor as a diplomatic object, we can observe the different diplomatic frameworks in which that object was conceived ...
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Materialized internationalism: How the IAEA made the Vinča Dosimetry Experiment, and how the experiment made the IAEA
After a deadly 1958 nuclear reactor accident in Vinča, Yugoslavia, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) engaged in intensive nuclear diplomacy to assemble a major international scientific experiment on radiation dosimetry at the accident site. The 1960 Vinča Dosimetry Experiment made history as the first multinational “big science” project in ...
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The Unflinching Mr. Smith and the Nuclear Age
This article focuses on the U.S. diplomat and nuclear arms control negotiator Gerald (Gerry) Coat Smith in order to cast new light on the importance of diplomats in the context of the set of international activities currently labelled as “science diplomacy.” Smith, a lawyer by training, was a key negotiator ...
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WSDS20 Student Takes: Scramble for Africa
WSDS Student Takes’ is a two-edition series in 2020 and 2021 written by alumni of InsSciDE's Warsaw Science Diplomacy School in the weeks and months following their completion of the program. This article is by WSDS 2020 alumni who belonged to ’Team Scramble for Africa/Gamito-Marques', named after the historical case ...
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WSDS20 Student Takes: Towards a Joint Approach for EU Science Diplomacy
WSDS Student Takes’ is a two-edition series in 2020 and 2021 written by alumni of InsSciDE's Warsaw Science Diplomacy School in the weeks and months following their completion of the program. This article is by WSDS 2020 alumni who belonged to ’Team Biodiversity/Le Roux ', named after the historical case ...
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WSDS20 Student Takes: Science Diplomacy and the Litter at Sea
WSDS Student Takes’ is a two-edition series in 2020 and 2021 written by alumni of InsSciDE's Warsaw Science Diplomacy School in the weeks and months following their completion of the program. This article is by WSDS 2020 alumni who belonged to ’Team Ocean/Robinson', named after the historical case study of ...
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