On Monday and Tuesday, I had the pleasure to attend at a meeting that brought the community of scholars working on diplomatic practices together in Copenhagen. The event was organized by Rebecca Adler-Nissen’s DIPLOFACE project.

With 50+ scholars attending and presenting their ideas and book projects, the event well documented the strong overlap between diplomacy studies and international practice theory. The fact that the majority of practice scholars in International Relations works in one way or the other on diplomatic practices, has brought up some criticism against practice theory as to focused on global elite. Yet, one should not overlook the fact that diplomacy is one of the foundational practice of international relations. What became clear at the meeting, is that scholars are also substantially interested in the practices of international administrators or scientific experts, which may (or may not) participate in diplomacy as practice.

A key cross-cutting theme of the event were also the substantial transformations that diplomacy faces in an age of increasingly digitally mediated interactions and the return of geopolitical discourse.