The War & Diplomacy Podcast: From the Centre for War and Diplomacy at Lancaster University

Dr Marco Wyss, Reader in International History and Security at Lancaster University and a Deputy Director of the Centre for War and Diplomacy, is joined by Dr James Rogers, Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science at SDU and History Hit Warfare podcast host, on the topic of “Drones: From ‘Precision Warfare’ to Today’s Battlefields”. Drone warfare, perceived to be a relatively modern addition to the battlefield, transcends the threats of war on the ground but brings with it new threats to security and the potential for drone genocide. This podcast discusses the prominence of drones on today’s global battlefields, covering topics such as the evolution of drone development and their early practicality, as well as the future of air power and combat. In doing so, it traces the history of drone warfare to the early twentieth century, to the conceptualisation of precision bombing by the US in the First World War.

Dr James Rogers is Associate Fellow within The London School of Economics and Political Science’s foreign policy think tank (LSE IDEAS). He is also currently Special Advisor to the UK Parliament’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drones, Advisor to the United Nations, a UK MoD Defence Opinion Leader, and NATO Country Director of the NATO SPS funded Vulnerabilities of the Drone Age project. He has previously been a Visiting Research Fellow at Stanford University, Yale University, and the University of Oxford. He is the Co-founder and Co-Convenor of BISA War Studies, the War Studies section of the British International Studies Association. James is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow within the Cornell Tech Policy Lab at Cornell University. His forthcoming publication, Precision: A History of Warfare, with Manchester University Press, is out at the end of 2022.

The Centre for War and Diplomacy at Lancaster University and the British International History Group co-hosted ‘The Falklands War at 40: Voices of the Conflict’ on Thursday 26 May 2022, attended by staff and students, alongside members of local history groups, and the general public. This event brought together researchers and curators, joined by a Falklands veteran and Lancaster alumnus Major General Chip Chapman, to discuss working with voices of the conflict forty years on. A recording has been made into a podcast for the War and Diplomacy podcast series.

The panel was chaired by Professor Gaynor Johnson, Professor of International History at the University of Kent, Honorary Researcher at the Centre for War and Diplomacy, and Conference Officer of the British International History Group. Panellists included: Mr John Beales, a doctoral student at Keele University and Imperial War Museums, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Major General Chip Chapman, a platoon commander in 2nd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment (2 PARA) in the Falklands campaign. Dr Peter Johnston, Head of Collections and Research at the Royal Air Force Museum, responsible for developing the museum’s research and collection strategies, and exhibitions. Professor Helen Parr of Keele University, author of Our Boys: The Story of a Paratrooper(Penguin, 2019), a history of the Parachute Regiment in the Falklands. Professor Tony Pollard of Glasgow University, a leading archaeologist working on sites of conflict from across history, and heading a new investigation into the landscape of the Falklands War.

Dr Stephanie Wright, lecturer in Modern European History at Lancaster University and Dr Regina Mühlhäuser, Senior Researcher at the Hamburg Foundation for the Advancement of Research and Culture discuss what the history of sexual violence perpetrated by the German Wehrmacht in the Second World War can tell us about sexual violence in current wars, including the war in Ukraine. This podcast grapples with the challenges of studying the history of sexual violence, especially given the paucity of sources and the fact that many victims were shamed into silence. In conversation, Stephanie and Regina highlight the importance of being attentive to which stories of sexual violence we are willing to listen to, and which ‘constellations’ or ‘narratives’ of rape are given priority in historical and media accounts of particular wars.

Spyros Tsoutsoumpis, associate lecturer and researcher at the Centre for War and Diplomacy at Lancaster University is joined by Dr Umit Kurt, research fellow at The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute/Polonsky Academy in Jerusalem. Joining Spyros and Umit to talk about the Armenian Genocide in Aintab are Professor Janet Klein and Dr Max Bergholz. Professor Janet Klein is an expert in the field of Ottoman Studies and the author of an outstanding monograph on Kurdish tribal militias, The Margins of Empire: Kurdish Militias in the Ottoman Tribal Zone. Dr Max Bergholz from Concordia University, Canada, is an associate professor and the author of Violence as a Generative Force: Identity, Nationalism, and Memory in a Balkan Community. 

Dr Thomas Mills, Senior Lecturer at Lancaster University and Director of the Centre for War and Diplomacy is joined by Patrick Salmon, Chief Historian at the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development office. In his seventeen years in office, Patrick has published a number of volumes in the flagship series, Documents on British Policy Overseas, including works on German unification at the end of the Cold War and UK/South Africa relations during the era of apartheid. He also has expertise on Scandinavia and has published works including Scandinavia and the great powers 1890 to 1940, and Scandinavia in British policy during the twilight war, 1939 to 1940. His latest book is entitled The Control of the Past: Herbert Butterfield and the Pitfalls of Official History, published by University of London Press (2021). Mills and Salmon discuss this recently published work, looking at Patrick’s experience and expertise as well as his motivation for researching this topic.

This podcast discusses the merger of the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not only has Winfried extensively worked on this topic but it has also become a contentious historical issue in recent years as archival material has become available thirty years after the event. Heinemann and Wyss question whether the merger of the two Germanies and their armed forces after the end of the Cold War was in fact a merger, a hostile takeover or something in between with the transferral of East German personnel into the Bundeswehr.

Colonel Professor Winfried Heinemann has extensively researched the diplomatic history of NATO, post-World War II German military history (in both the East and West), and especially the military resistance against Hitler. His most recent book is Operation “Valkyrie”: A Military History of the 20 July 1944 Plot(De Gruyter Studies in Military History, 2021).

This special episode marks the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Boroughbridge and the execution of Thomas, earl of Lancaster, in 1322. This was the bloody end of a civil war that scarred one of England’s most troubled and turbulent reigns, that of Edward II. Dr Sophie Ambler is the Deputy Director of the Centre for War and Diplomacy and author of The Song of Simon de Montfort: England's First Revolutionary and the Death of Chivalry(2019); Dr Andrew Spencer is Fellow and Senior Tutor of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and has published extensively on the nobility, politics and constitution of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century England; Dr Paul Dryburgh is Principal Record Specialist at The National Archives, and has been at the forefront of new research into the records and government of the era for nearly twenty years. Paul, Andrew and Sophie are part of a team of researchers – from the The National Archives and the Universities of Lincoln, Cambridge and Lancaster– involved in a new collaborative research project: ‘A State within a State? The making of the Duchy of Lancaster, c.1066-1422’.

In this episode, Dr Mateo Mohammad Farzaneh discusses the research behind his new book,Iranian Women and Gender in the Iran-Iraq War (Gender, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East)(Syracuse University Press, 2021),with Dr Maryam Ghorbankarimi.  In recognition of the upcoming anniversary of the Iran-Iran War (1980-1988) on 22 September, Dr Farzaneh examines the role of women in this conflict and highlights the integral place women have historically played in the arena of warfare and the need to continue research in this field. His book assesses the divergent views Iranian women took in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, in which women of conservative religious backgrounds supported the conquering theocratic regime’s religiously-defined gender roles, while those who had been more active in civil society before the revolution pushed back against the gender biases. Yet despite these ideological differences, both groups became important fixtures in the war efforts during the 1980s as first responders, surgeons, intelligence officers, journalists, and photographers.

Dr Farzaneh, an Iranian native, is an associate professor of history at Northeastern Illinois University, specialising in the history of Iran, the modern Middle East, and Islamic civilisation. He is the author ofThe Iranian Constitutional Revolution and the Clerical Leadership of Khurasani(Syracuse University Press, 2015).

In this episode,  Dr Keith Hamilton discusses the vibrant social and administrative history of the nineteenth-century Foreign Office at Whitehall with the CWD's Prof Gaynor Johnson.  Dr Hamilton, formerly a historian of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, has evaluated the records and accounts of domestic staff rather than just the higher levels of government agents to create a more comprehensive picture of diplomatic history.  This archival work has also served as the foundation for Dr Hamilton's latest book, Servants of Diplomacy. A Domestic History of the Victorian Foreign Office (Bloomsbury, 2021), which is an invaluable complement to his wider work on the history of British diplomacy. 

To find out more about Servants of Diplomacy, or to order a copy, please visit the publisher's website:  https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/servants-of-diplomacy-9781350159150/

The CWD advises with sadness that Dr Keith Hamilton passed away in October 2023. You can find his obituary here: https://issuu.com/fcohistorians/docs/keith_hamilton_obituary

We offer our condolences to Dr Hamilton's family, friends and colleagues.

This special episode of the War & Diplomacy Podcast Series is a recording of an event that was hosted on 16 June 2021. This discussion, led by the Deputy-Director Dr Thomas Mills, highlights aspects of Alistair Burt's career as an MP and a minister in the Foreign Office.  The conversation details several notable diplomatic events that took place during his tenure in office.

About Alistair Burt:

Recently appointed Pro-Chancellor of Lancaster University, Alistair Burt was a member of parliament for over 30 years, representing the constituencies of Bury North and North East Bedfordshire. He served in the government of Margaret Thatcher as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Kenneth Baker and in John Major’s government as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Social Security. Having returned to parliament in 2001, he served in various opposition roles, including Assistant Chief Whip and Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party.

Following the 2010 election, Alistair Burt was appointed by David Cameron to serve as a minister in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office with responsibility for the Middle East and North Africa. After a period as a minister in the Department of Health, he was appointed by Theresa May in 2017 as a Minister in both the FCO and Department for International Development, again with responsibility for the Middle East and North Africa region.

Alistair Burt stood down from parliament at the 2019 election, having had the Conservative whip withdrawn in September of that year for his opposition to Brexit policy, only for it to be restored the following month. Alongside his current role at Lancaster, Alistair is a Council member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and a Distinguished Fellow at the Royal Institute for Strategic Studies.

In 1939, South Africa entered World War II on the side of the Allied powers, although not without internal opposition. The German government capitalised on these domestic rifts and secretly engaged the leaders of the pro-fascist Ossewabrandwag in order to encourage sedition across South Africa and intercept naval intelligence- ultimately to undermine the strategic importance of the Cape of Good Hope for Allied efforts. To this end, a complex network of spies was dispatched to collect intelligence to send back to the Reich by way of coded messages to Axis diplomatic agents stationed in Mozambique. These spies and their tactics are the focus of Dr Evert Kleynhans' new book, Hitler’s South African Spies (Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2021). In this podcast, Dr Kleynhans and Dr Marco Wyss, Director of the Centre for War and Diplomacy, discuss the role of intelligence in South Africa during the Second World War, the impact these spies had on the outcome of the war, and how research into this field continues to develop.

Dr Evert Kleynhans is a senior lecturer in the Department of Military History at the Faculty of Military Science of Stellenbosch University. He lectures undergraduate and postgraduate modules on the evolution of warfare, African military history, and low-intensity conflict in Africa since 1945. His research interests include South African participation in both World Wars, insurgency and counterinsurgency in Africa, and the broad historical impact of climate and terrain on warfare. Dr Kleynhans formerly served as an officer in the South African National Defence Force, whereafter he was appointed as the archivist, and later director, of the Records, Archives and Museums Division of North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa. His book, Hitler's South African Spies: Secret Agents and the Intelligence War in South Africa, was published by Jonathan Ball Publishers this year and is available through reputable booksellers.

Papal calls to crusade were some of the most influential texts in the medieval West: key messages, crafted at the papal court, that were disseminated and preached across Christendom to mobilise men and women of every level of society to take up the crusading cause. These calls were a dynamic element of a crusading society, in which all Christians were responsible for the fate of the Holy Land and could support the crusading movement by bearing arms or offering prayers. How were these calls crafted? How were they interpreted, reshaped and shared by the people of Christendom? In this episode, Dr Sophie Ambler, Deputy Director of the Centre for War and Diplomacy, talks to Dr Thomas Smith about his work investigating papal calls to crusade – both their production and their later life, once they were released ‘into the wild’.

Dr Smith is an expert in ecclesiastical and crusading history in the central Middle Ages. After completing his doctorate at Royal Holloway, he was Scouloudi Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research and then Leverhulme Study Abroad Fellow at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. After two years at Trinity College, Dublin, he was Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Leeds, before joining the History Department at Rugby School in 2019. His early work explored papal policy and financing in relation to the crusading movement, in a number of articles and his first book: Curia and Crusade: Pope Honorius III and the Recovery of the Holy Land, 1216-1227, published with Breopls in 2017. He has since undertaken important work in the forensic investigation of various documents related to the crusades, from papal bulls, to letters and chronicles, published across a host of articles in journals such as Historical Research, Viator, Crusades, and the Journal of Ecclesiastical History. He is currently completing his second monograph, on the Letters of the First Crusade, forthcoming with Boydell and Brewer, as well as working with Dr Susan Edgington on a new edition of a neglected chronicle of the First Crusade, traditionally attributed to Bartolf of Nangis.

Select works by Thomas Smith:

Music credit: Kai Engel, 'Flames of Rome', Calls and Echoes (Southern's City Lab, 2014).

The series of conflicts known as the Wars of the Roses tore through fifteenth-century England: the houses of Lancaster and York and their supporters fought over notions of good governance and the right to wear the crown, while vast swathes of the population took up arms in rebellion or on the battlefield, or lived in fear of rampaging armies. What can historians deduce about popular involvement in the Wars, including in key events such as the Battle of Towton (1461)? How can the treatment of prisoners and the battlefield dead at the battles of Wakefield (1460) and Tewkesbury (1471) reveal concepts of chivalry and military ethics? And how did those in power – from Edward IV, to Margaret of Anjou and Richard III – seek to manage popular fears? In this podcast, Dr Gordon McKelvie discusses his research on these topics with Dr Sophie Ambler, Deputy Director of the Centre for War and Diplomacy.

Dr Gordon McKelvie is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Winchester, where he is also a convenor for the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Research. He has worked extensively on political society and warfare in England in the long fifteenth century. Following various journal articles and chapters, his first book was published with Boydell and Brewer in 2020: Bastard Feudalism, English Society and the Law: The Statutes of Livery, 1390 to 1520. This examines the effectiveness of new laws on social relations and how ‘bastard feudal’ ties facilitated many of the rebellions and acts of noble violence in the long fifteenth century. Dr McKelvie’s new research considers both the role of chivalry and martial ethics in the Wars, and the importance of managing popular emotions – principally fear and hatred – for use as weapons of military strategy.

Dr McKelvie’s book Bastard Feudalism, English Society and the Law: The Statutes of Livery, 1390 to 1520is available from Boydell and Brewer. You can learn more about this research in his blog for the Boydell and Brewer website.

In a recent article for The Conversation, marking the 550th anniversary of the Battle of Tewkesbury, Dr McKelvie discusses: ‘Wars of the Roses: How the French meddled in this very English conflict’.

Music credit: Kai Engel, 'Flames of Rome', Calls and Echoes (Southern's City Lab, 2014).

Dr Matthew Bennett, leading expert in medieval military history, discusses the technology, economy, and ideology of warfare in the medieval age with Dr Sophie Ambler, Deputy Director of the Centre for War and Diplomacy at Lancaster University.

Dr Bennett describes the connections between warfare, trade and finance in the medieval West, as well as military technology – from bows to armour, artillery and fortifications – and explores the concept of chivalry, the treatment of prisoners of war, and how knights and common soldiers fared differently on the battlefield. He also explains the role of mercenaries and sets out some of the eternal truths of warfare that can be identified in the medieval period.

Dr Bennett is a leading expert on the history of warfare and military culture in the medieval West. He spent three decades teaching at The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (retiring in 2015) and has since been lecturing part-time at the University of Winchester, where he was recently made a Visiting Research Fellow. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Society of Antiquaries (London). He has also been a Trustee of The Battlefields Trust, for whom he led the Magna Carta Wars project, supported by a Heritage Lottery Fund grant. He has been an editor of the ‘Boydell and Brewer Warfare in History Series’ since its foundation in 1995.

His own extensive publications include the Cambridge Atlas of Medieval Warfare, books on the Norman Conquest of England and the Battle of Agincourt for Osprey Books, and a host of articles, on topics ranging from the experience of civilian populations in the Hundred Years War, to masculinity, medieval hostageship, chivalry and the conduct of war, and most recently the Battle of Hastings as well as Norman battle tactics across the Mediterranean.

Books, websites and sources mentioned in the podcast:

Matthew Bennett and Katherine Weikert (eds.), Medieval Hostageship c.700-c.1500
Hostage, Captive, Prisoner of War, Guarantee, Peacemaker, (Routledge, 2019)

Matthew Bennett and Nicholas Hooper, The Cambridge Illustrated Atlas of Warfare: The Middle Ages, 768–1487, (Cambridge University Press, 1996)

‘The Soldier in Later Medieval England’ – a database containing the names of soldiers serving the English crown between 1369 and 1453, developed by Professors Anne Curry and Adrian Bell and their team, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council: https://www.medievalsoldier.org/

The Pipe Roll Society website provides an extensive introduction to these key records of the medieval English state. The Society is dedicated to publishing editions of the pipe rolls of the Exchequer and of other related medieval documents: https://piperollsociety.co.uk/

The History of William Marshal, trans. Nigel Bryant (Boydell and Brewer, 2016)

Music credit: Kai Engel, 'Flames of Rome', Calls and Echoes (Southern's City Lab, 2014).

Dr Hugo Meijer is a CNRS Research Fellow at Sciences Po Paris, Center for International Studies (CERI), and is the Founding Director of The European Initiative for Security Studies (EISS), a multidisciplinary network of scholars that share the goal of consolidating security studies in Europe. His research interests lie at the intersection of foreign policy analysis and security studies, with a particular interest in the triangle between the US and China, the US and Europe, and Europe and China.

Dr Meijer is currently working on two research projects: the reconfiguration of American hegemony through the prism of the US-led regional alliance systems in Europe and in the Asia-Pacific since the end of the Second World War; and on European foreign and security policies in the face of a rising China in the post-Cold War period. Previously, he was Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the European University Institute (EUI, Florence), Lecturer in Defence Studies at King’s College London and a Researcher at the Institute for Strategic Research (IRSEM, Paris). Dr Meijer was also a Senior Common Room Member at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University and a visiting scholar at the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at George Washington University. He received his Ph.D. in International Relations from Sciences Po (cum laude), completed his M.A. in International Relations at Johns Hopkins University/School of Advanced International Studies (Washington DC/Bologna) and his B.A. in political economy at the LUISS (Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali) Guido Carli in Rome.

In relation to this discussion, see his recent article in International Security, entitled “Illusions of Autonomy: Why Europe Cannot Provide for Its Own Security Even if the United States Pulls Back”, which he co-authored with Stephen Brooks from Dartmouth College. This article (and the impressive research on which it is based) provides the basis for this podcast.

Dr Nathaniel Powell discusses France's Wars in Chad: Military Intervention and Decolonization in Africa with Dr Marco Wyss of the CWD.

Dr Powell completed his PhD in International History and Politics from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva in 2013. His research focuses on the postcolonial relationship between France and its former African colonies, particularly on the question of military interventions. He has published on various facets of the history of French military interventions in Africa in the Journal of Cold War Studies, African Security, Les Temps Modernes, International History Review,as well as in media outlets such as Foreign Affairs, War on the Rocks, and The Conversation.His current research looks at the role of French intelligence and security assistance in the political trajectories of newly independent African states in the 1960s and 1970s. He is also working on a book project focusing on Western support for Mobutu's Zaire in the 1970s.

Nat’s most recent publication, France's Wars in Chad: Military Intervention and Decolonization in Africa, is published by Cambridge University Press. 

Music credit: Kai Engel, 'Flames of Rome', Calls and Echoes (Southern's City Lab, 2014).

The Albigensian Crusade of the early thirteenth century saw crusading used to combat heresy in southern France. Dr Gregory Lippiatt, in discussion with the CWD’s Dr Sophie Ambler, discusses how the crusade came about, its brutality and violence, and the role of Simon V of Montfort. Dr Lippiatt also discusses developments in governance introduced by the Statutes of Pamiers (1212), a crusader constitution for the Midi.

Dr Lippiatt is Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Exeter and a historian of aristocratic government in the High Middle Ages and its intersection with Christian reform movements, particularly the crusades.

Dr Lippiatt's work considers the ways in which barons attempted to use their lordship to create an idealised Christian republic, at times through the imposition of military force. He is currently preparing a major monograph for Oxford University Press on the Statutes of Pamiers.

Dr Lippiatt’s publications include Simon V of Montfort and Baronial Government, 1195-1218, (Oxford University Press, 2017), ‘Reform and Custom: the Statutes of Pamiers in Early Thirteenth-Century Christendom’,in M. Aurell , G. Lippiatt and L. Macé (eds.), Simon de Montfort (c. 1170-1218): Le croisé, son lignage et son temps, (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), and ‘Worse than all the Infidels: the Albigensian Crusade and the Continuing Call of the East’, in G. Lippiatt and J. Bird (eds.), Crusading Europe: Essays in Honour of Christopher Tyerman, (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019).

Dr Lippiatt's blog for the Exeter Centre for Medieval Studies, is free to access: https://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/medievalstudies/2020/04/a-new-charter-from-the-fourth-crusade/

Music credit: Kai Engel, 'Flames of Rome', Calls and Echoes (Southern's City Lab, 2014).

In this episode, Dr Anaïs Waag (University of Lincoln) talks to the CWD's Dr Sophie Ambler about some of the thirteenth century's most notable women, and how their letters illuminate their role in diplomacy, warfare, and the commemoration of battle. From civil wars to crusades, royal women like Berenguela and Blanche of Castile and Eleanor and Marguerite of Provence played a vital part in securing peace treaties – but also in raising and leading armies and celebrating the military feats of their families. Drawing from the evidence of their letters, Dr Waag asks whether these women worked within a gendered language of power, and explains how a comparative study of their careers invites us to revise our understanding of how royal rule operated in medieval Europe.

Dr Waag is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the School of History and Heritage at the University of Lincoln. She specialises in gender studies and women's history in medieval Europe, taking a comparative perspective to examine how female power was formally and publicly expressed in England, France and the Iberian Peninsula. Her publications include 'Gender and the language of politics in thirteenth-century queens' letters', published in Historical Research, 'Rethinking battle commemoration: female letters and the myth of the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa', in the Journal of Medieval History, and most recently 'The Letters of Eleanor and Marguerite of Provence in Thirteenth-Century Anglo-French Relations', in the series Thirteenth Century England.

Music credit: Kai Engel, 'Flames of Rome', Calls and Echoes (Southern's City Lab, 2014).

In this interview, Dr Marco Wyss from the CWD and Prof Mark Bradley discuss the Vietnam War from the perspective of the Vietnamese, the United States' role as a guarantor of human rights, and ongoing work in the history of the Global South.

Prof Mark Bradley is a Bernadotte E. Schmitt Distinguished Service Professor of International History and the College, the Deputy Dean of Division of the Social Sciences Faculty, the Director of the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights, and a Senior Fellow of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts at the University of Chicago.  Prof Bradley is the author of The World Reimagined: Americans and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century (2016), Vietnam at War(2009), and Imagining Vietnam and America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam (2000), which won the Harry J. Benda Prize from the Association for Asian Studies. He is the co-editor of Making the Forever War(2021),Familiar Made Strange: American Icons and Artifacts after the Transnational Turn(2015), Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars (2008), and Truth Claims: Representation and Human Rights (2001). His work has appeared in the American Historical Review, Journal of American History, the Journal of World History, Diplomatic History, and Dissent.

Music credit: Kai Engel, 'Flames of Rome', Calls and Echoes (Southern's City Lab, 2014).

In this episode, Simon Collis CMG interviewed by the CWD's Nic Coombs discusses his experiences in the Middle East as former British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and Qatar.  Simon discusses the craft of diplomacy giving fascinating insights into warfare in the region, religious strife, human rights and the role of the diplomat in representing their country's interests.

Simon Collis CMG joined the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office in 1978 and after studying Arabic has served mainly in the Middle East and South Asia.  In addition to his ambassadorial appointments, he was British Consul-General in Dubai and in Basra.  Simon has also served in Tunis, New Delhi and Amman.

Nic Coombs is also a former member of HM Diplomatic Service principally working in or on the Middle East.  He has served in Amman, and twice in Riyadh.  Nic has particular interests in Saudi Arabia, salafism and sectarianism, and the practice of diplomacy.  He was a Teaching Fellow in PPR at Lancaster University and is a member of the CWD.

For more information on the CWD including events, research and news see: lancaster.ac.uk/cwd

Music credit: Kai Engel, 'Flames of Rome', Calls and Echoes (Southern's City Lab, 2014).

 The Pilgrims Society was an elite dining club which developed an important role in the broader political relationship between the US and Britain in the first half of the twentieth century. Dr Stephen Bowman talking with the CWD's Dr Tom Mills depicts the Pilgrims and their activities as an early form of what we now refer to as public diplomacy.

Dr Stephen Bowman, is a Lecturer in British Political History at Stirling University. Stephen works primarily on political and economic relations between the United States and Great Britain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and was the winner of the Transatlantic Studies Association's Donald Cameron Watt Prize in 2013.  He has published a number of journal articles and in 2018 published his first book, The Pilgrims Society and Public Diplomacy, 1895-1945,  which is the topic of the podcast.

'The Pilgrims Society and Public Diplomacy, 1895-1945 - Edinburgh Studies and Anglo-American Relations' by Dr Stephen Bowman, is published by Edinburgh University Press.

Checkout the CWD website for details of events, our research and news: lancaster.ac.uk/cwd

You can also like our Facebook page - facebook.com/CWDLancaster

Follow us on Twitter - @CWDlancaster

Music credit: Kai Engel, 'Flames of Rome', Calls and Echoes (Southern's City Lab, 2014).

Dr Flavia Gasbarri (King's College London) and Dr Marco Wyss (Lancaster University) discuss the Cold War in Africa, particularly during the 1970s and 1980s. Dr Gasbarri examines the United States' role in the conflict, and how the end of the Cold War affected US foreign policy in Africa.

About the guest:

Dr Gasbarri is co-Chair of the KCL Africa Research Group and a member of the KCL Centre for Grand Strategy. She completed her PhD in War Studies at King's College London in 2014, with a project entitled "The United States and the end of the Cold War in Africa, 1988-1994".  After the end of her doctoral studies, Dr Gasbarri also worked at the Joint Services Command and Staff College (JSCSC) in Shrivenham, and at the Royal College of Defence Studies (RCDS), where she was Academic Tutor for the British Armed Forces (both at junior and senior level). Her book entitled US Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War in Africa waspublished this year in Routledge’s ‘Cold War History’ series (edited by Arne Westad and Michael Cox). The book can be bought directly from Routledge, Amazon, or any other respectable bookseller.

Checkout the CWD website for details of events, our research and news: lancaster.ac.uk/cwd

Music credit: Kai Engel, 'Flames of Rome', Calls and Echoes (Southern's City Lab, 2014)

Prof Gaynor Johnson explores the often-overlooked role civil servants in the formulation of foreign policy, including the role of women in the British Foreign Office. She discusses innovative methodological approaches to the study of diplomatic history, including the use of prosopography.

Gaynor has published widely in the field of international history on topics ranging from fanaticism and warfare to interwar appeasement. She led a major AHRC project on British and French attitudes towards European integration between 1919 and 1957. A major preoccupation of her work has been the study of diplomacy and diplomats. She has published studies of Robert Cecil, Eric Phipps and Lord D’Abernon to name but a few. 

She has been Professor of International History at the University of Kent since 2013. She sits on the executive committees of the British International History Group and the Transatlantic Studies Association and was previously book reviews editor for the International History Review. She is also an Honorary Researcher at the Centre for War and Diplomacy.

Gaynor's article 'Women Clerks and Typists in the British Foreign Office, 1920-1960: A Prosopographic Study'has just been published and you can find a full copy here:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09592296.2020.1842066

Music credit: Kai Engel, 'Flames of Rome', Calls and Echoes (Southern's City Lab, 2014).

Prof Winfried Heinemann and Dr Marco Wyss discuss Operation Valkyrie (the unsuccessful assassination attempt of Adolf HItler in 1944) and the legacy of military resistance against Hitler. 

About the guest:

Colonel Professor Winfried Heinemann has spent his career at the Center for Military History and Social Sciences of the Bundeswehr in Potsdam, where he worked in editorial, research, and leadership positions. There, he notably carried out extensive research on the diplomatic history of NATO, post-World War II German military history – in both its Eastern and Western variants – and, especially, the military resistance against Hitler. Currently, he is a Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Cottbus University, serves as the associate and book reviews editor of the International Journal of Military History, and is an Honorary Researcher of our Centre for War and Diplomacy.  His new book, Operation Valkyrie: A Military History of 20 July 1944 (in German, but an English edition is forthcoming in 2021) through Amazon, the publisher (de Gruyter Oldenbourg), or any respectable bookseller.

Music credit: Kai Engel, 'Flames of Rome', Calls and Echoes (Southern's City Lab, 2014)