Merje Kuus (University of British Columbia) will give a talk with the title " How do we know what diplomats know?: Interpretation and narrative in the study of transnational expertise" at a guest seminar, organized by the Gender and Diplomacy Program, GenDip.
How do we know what diplomats know?:Interpretation and narrative in the study of transnational expertise
Merje Kuus, Professor of Geography, The University of British Columbia, Canada
Abstract:
This talk explores the methodological difficulties that arise in the empirical investigation of diplomatic practice. I will first present fieldwork material from my research on European diplomacy to conjure a sense of one diplomatic place–Brussels. Drawing from a dozen years of interview-based work in Brussels, I foreground the ambiguous and indeterminate character of diplomatic decision-making and I stress the need to closely consider the sensory texture of place and milieu in our analyses of it. I will then turn to the methodological difficulties around interpretation, generalization, and writing style that arise in such work, especially when fieldwork is curtailed and interpretation is increasingly made on the basis of textual and virtual data. I hope to prompt discussion on (1) the necessarily ambiguous and slow character of the ‘peopled’ study of diplomacy and (2) the ways in which embodied presence in physical space matters in it.
The seminar will be onsite in Room B340, Lilla Skansen.
Read more about Merje Kuus's research: http://www.geog.ubc.ca/~kuus