EL-CSID aspires to enhance the European knowledge base on cultural and science diplomacy, and on the choices facing the European Union in shaping the present and future order. Our ambition is to re-shape the way the applied policy literature develops in the next few years.

In this regard, EL-CSID’s aim for its generic impact is fivefold:

1. To identify and analyse the evolving structures of cultural and science diplomacy in the current era—as we sit at the (new and difficult) interstices of a waning hegemonic era and an emerging multi-polar one;
    

2. To bring strong analytical lenses to bear on the role of the EU, and especially the impact of its science, innovation and external cultural policies on these structures;
    

3. To develop a composite picture of the multiple external ties in culture and science that the EU has developed, and are developing, with specific countries and “world regions”;
    

4. To provide, through a series of case studies, state-of-the-art analysis of the key areas of European external cultural relations and its science diplomacy that bear specifically upon the EU’s role as a global actor;
    

5. To examine the way the EU interacts with not only other states but also those increasingly important non-state actors, especially international organisations and trans-national policy networks, prominent in global cultural and scientific collaboration.

While it will identify and examine the opportunities and benefits of successful cultural, science and innovation diplomacy, the project will also provide a reality check, identifying the constraints and limits imposed by some at times too easily made, excessively optimistic and poorly implemented endeavours in these domains—particularly in the international projection of national cultures.