This event is only for King's College London - Department of War Studies BA & MA students

In this event hosted by the Centre for Grand Strategy, Prof R.P. Barston will give two Workshops which will be closely linked to Prof. Barston's new book 'Diplomatic Methods'

Speaker: Prof R.P. Barston, author and former Visiting Professor in the Department of War Studies

Workshop 1: 5th February 1pm - 3pm (Room: Strand Building S3.03) - Key Changes in Diplomatic Methods post 2000 

Diplomacy has substantially changed in the last decade and half. In this Workshop we will look at some of the major changes affecting aims and purposes of diplomacy - the decline of multilateralism, new groupings, creation of plurilateral groups (trade, environment) different types of more innovative and informal agreements and disengaged diplomacy.

The Workshop will introduce a number of new core concepts such as parallel diplomacy, counter diplomacy, and strategic use of time to illustrate the grey area between diplomacy as cooperation and diplomacy used in a support of coercion, which is now one of the critical elements of the New Diplomacy. Other forms of grey area diplomacy illustrated include the diplomacy of sanctions evasion and so called, "dark fleets" the vehicles for oil and commodity transportation.

The final parts of the Workshop will look at some of the implications of these changes for what is a very different form of diplomacy than envisaged in traditional images of diplomacy.

To attend Workshop 1 please register using this link 

Workshop 2: 7th February 1pm - 3pm (Room: Bush House NE 1.03) - 'New Developments in Diplomacy: geopolitics' and 'Windows on Diplomacy: Using International Documentation'

This Workshop covers two areas, the first part covers the concept of logistics diplomacy. This is a unique opportunity to learn something about what has become a critical area of diplomacy-logistics. That is the local, regional; global transportation of goods, resources, and geopolitical dimensions but is generally not covered. Participants will get a good grounding in the international regulatory side, key issues, and documentary resources which can be used for essays, as part of research projects and in a variety of later work contexts – assessment reports, projects, advocacy and negotiations.

The second part of the Workshop shifts the focus to Documentation. The aims is to familiarize you with using international documentation. To do this we will look at some of:

1. The documents of three current multilateral agreements (Biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction; plastics; UNEP; WTO)
2. Windows on Diplomacy - This Workshop will use several key documents from the last five years to show diplomacy at work as the molding of competing interests

To attend Workshop 2 please register using this link

Workshop format- informal, lots of illustrations and plenty of opportunity for questions.

Participants will find it useful as background if they could look over main definitions and concepts in outline ln chapters 2, 7, 8 for Workshop 1 and chapters 4, 5, and 9 for Workshop 2 of Diplomatic Methods initially and return to these later as required - for the detailed argument and illustrations of the evolution of contemporary diplomacy (Prof RPBarston, Diplomatic Methods Routledge, 2025). (ISBN 978 -1-032-06819-0)

About the speaker

Prof R.P.Barston is an international relations and diplomacy specialist. He previously taught at Lancaster University, London School of Economics and King’s College (KCL). His diplomatic work has included UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, bilateral, multilateral (e.g law of the sea conference and regional); World Bank Consultant Southeast Asia at National Institute of Public Administration (INTAN (Malaysia); regional cooperation, Caribbean; special envoy Hanoi; accredited to International Maritime Organisation.

Other book publications include -Maritime Dimension, The Other Powers, and Modern Diplomacy (5th ed)