On May 15, the Kyiv School of Diplomatic Arts held an online conference for the universities engaged in the project “Education vs. Disinformation: Countering Fake Histories in International Politics and Propaganda”.
The Kyiv School of Diplomatic Arts offers a new course Historical Narratives in International Politics.
On May 12, the Kyiv School of Diplomatic Arts had the honour to hold the meeting with Ukraine’s Ambassador to Moldova Dr. Marko Shevchenko.
The students and the faculty members of 11 Ukrainian universities availed themselves of this opportunity to learn from our distinguished guest’s experience.
On May 4, the Kyiv School of Diplomatic Arts and our partner universities had the honour to meet Dr. Jarosław Suchoples, a Polish historian and diplomat.
At present, Dr. Suchoples holds the position of Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Music, Art, and Culture Studies of the University of Jyväskylä (Finland). Prior to 2019, our guest served as the Ambassador of the Republic of Poland to the Republic of Finland.
Discussion Session:
On April 17, the Kyiv School of Diplomatic Arts had the pleasure to welcome Mr. Georgiy Tykhyi, Media and Communications Advisor to the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, a seasoned journalist who, among other attainments, had reported from the hottest spots on the frontline of Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression since its onslaught in 2014.
The Kyiv School of Diplomatic Arts continues its series “Diplomatic Talks – Universities Meet Diplomats”.
This time our audience, including the soon-to-be diplomatists from 11 centres of higher education, had the opportunity to interview our guest – Mr. Andriy Synelnykov, the Consul at Ukraine’s Embassy to South Africa – on this country’s sociocultural characteristics and their impact on diplomatic work.
On March 31, the Kyiv School of Diplomatic Arts launched the online series of Ukraine-Turkey Inter-University Virtual-Platform Meetings.
The Turkish academic community was represented by the faculty and the International Relations students of the Kadir Has University in Instabul. They met their counterparts from 14 Ukrainian institutions of higher education.
The event’s purpose was to provide the younger generation of the IR scholars with an opportunity to exchange questions and answers on the matters concerning the situation in the Black Sea region and in both countries.
The Kyiv School of Diplomatic Arts had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Yevhenia Gaber – one of Ukraine’s leading experts on Turkey.
Dr. Gaber is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a nonresident senior fellow at the Center in Modern Turkish Studies at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs (Carleton University, Canada). Previously, she served as a foreign-policy advisor to the prime minister of Ukraine, the deputy director of the Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a diplomat and a political affairs desk-officer at the Embassy of Ukraine in Ankara, and assistant professor at the International Relations Department of Odesa National Mechnikov University.
Network Building
The Kyiv School of Diplomatic Arts had the pleasure to take part at the Interdisciplinary Expert Meeting (titled as the Meeting of Citizen Jury) within the EU-supported International Project “Working towards resilient societies in the EaP: challenges and opportunities for the policy beyond 2020”.
The event was organized by the Kyiv School of Diplomatic Arts, the Representation of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Uganda and Southern Sudan, and the Makerere University, Uganda’s oldest institution of higher learning.
This meeting allowed the students and the faculty of Ukrainian educational centers to build ties with their Ugandan counterparts, as well as to exchange views, questions, and comments on a wide list of issues pertaining to Russia’s war against Ukraine, its historical roots and comprehension in Africa, the spread of Russian propaganda, the national identities and cultural traditions of both countries, the possibilities of educational collaboration between them, and the prospects for common grounds for the Ukraine-Uganda public diplomacy efforts at the level of civil society organizations.
On December 21, the Kyiv School of Diplomatic Arts (KSDA) launched the series of online discussion meetings within which the students and the faculty members of Ukraine’s educational institutions, as well as young activists of the civil society organizations will be able to converse with Ukrainian and foreign diplomats. The series is a part of the KSDA’s project Civil Education vs. Disinformation: Countering Fake Histories in International Politics and Propaganda.
The guest of the first event within the said diplomatic talks was Mr. Roman Pyrih, Counsellor at the Embassy of Ukraine to Kenya. Prior to his current posting, Mr. Pyrih served at Ukraine’s diplomatic missions in Vietnam, India, and South Korea. He is an author of numerous articles on the history of diplomacy and the role of religions in international relations.
The meeting brought together the representatives of 11 Ukrainian universities located in Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, Nizhyn, Odesa, L’viv, Chernivtsi, Uzhhorod, and (in the case of one institution that had to be relocated due to Russia’s invasion) in Kamianets-Podilskyi.
On November 9, 2022, the Kyiv School of Diplomatic Arts had the pleasure to host the presentation of the book by Dr. Christopher Miller We Shall Be Masters: Russian Pivots to East Asia from Peter the Great to Putin.
Dr. Miller’s work explores three centuries of Russia’s ambition to dominate over the vast expanse of Asian lands. As a track of both achievements and failures on the said course, this approach provides particularly useful food for thought with regard to the prospects of Moscow’s standing in the region, as well as of its aberrant ties with Beijing.
On October 20, 2022, the Kyiv School of Diplomatic Arts hosted the lecture by Dr. Łukasz Adamski, Deputy Director of the Juliusz Mieroszewski Dialogue Center (Poland).
The Lecture was focused on the those differences in the interpretations of the past that may pose a threat to the increasingly strong ties between Ukraine and Poland.
On October 6, 2022, the Kyiv School of Diplomatic Arts had the honour to host the lecture by Mr. James Sherr OBE, Senior Fellow of the Estonian Foreign Policy Institute at the International Centre for Defence & Security in Tallinn; Associate Fellow, Russia and Eurasia programme at Chatham House.
The lecture’s theme was inspired by the Chatham House report “Myths and misconceptions in the debate on Russia: How they affect Western policy and what can be done”.
Aggressive players on the international arena have always capitalized on disunity and division among bordering countries, especially if the publics of the latter may tend to disagree in the matters of collective identities, memory politics, and national histories.
Over the years, the malicious manipulative tactics in the said dimension have been consistently employed by the russian federation in its effort to destabilize the situation on the European continent. In multifold cases, the Kremlin attempted to utilize any traits of cultural (esp. interethnic) prejudices, the controversies over conflicting interpretations of historical events, and other similar discords in order to deflect the states of Eastern/Central-Eastern Europe from building a solid alliance of democratic societies.
The principal role in this geopolitical iniquity belongs to specifically targeted disinformation campaigns aimed to support legitimization-seeking (and predominantly populistic) quasi-historical discourses.
Monitoring Practicums:
The Kyiv School of Diplomatic Arts is conducting the series of practicums tasked with monitoring the Kremlin’s quasi-historical discourses and their circulation in different countries of the world.
The Kyiv School of Diplomatic Arts is happy to announce the launch of our recurring Seminar “Manners and Diplomacy”.
The Kyiv School of Diplomatic Arts is happy to report that our program “Simulation Games in Diplomatic Training” has been successfully launched.
The first Diplomacy Simulations sessions took place during the International Education Week 2021 and were conducted by the Team of the National Museum of American Diplomacy at the U.S. Department of State (NMAD).
The NMAD simulation model has served as an inspiring example for us in bringing this method to interested audiences in Ukraine and beyond.
On November 3, 2021, we held the first online Master Class within our Workshop “Intercultural Competencies in Public Diplomacy”.
The Guest Speaker of the event was Ms. Victoria Spashchenko, Board of Directors Member at the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research – Europa (SIETAR Europa).
Our Workshop:
In the collection of his posthumously published writings, the Testament Politique, Armand Jean de Plessis de Richelieu (1585-1642), Chief minister to Louis XIII of France and a fabulous titan of European diplomacy, left to posterity an omnium-gatherum of particularly practical wisdom. Among other treasures of the said trove, there is one that ventilates a rather obvious fact – id est “different nations have different characters“. With the combination of grandeur and shrewdness, the sage cardinal pontificated that such distinctiveness was to be reckoned with at all times.