Higher education institutions in a world of shifting challenges: conceptualising the EUI as an (informal) diplomatic actor?

In a world of shifting geopolitics and increasing societal and economic challenges, higher education institutions have become critical actors in promoting social, cultural, and educational relations among nations. Yet, in the IR and EU literature we know surprisingly little re how higher education institutions combine political agency with knowledge production and thus act as autonomous agents of informal diplomacy. From the perspective of international relations theory and the recent field of science diplomacy– defined as "scientific cooperation and engagement with the explicit intent of building positive relationships with foreign governments and societies"(Flink, 2022)– there is widespread acknowledgment among scholars that higher education is of paramount importance in addressing global challenges. However, the nature and role of HEIs in science diplomacy remains unclear. Science diplomacy literature has been primarily interested in understanding how the use of science can advance, support, and inform decision-making to promote diplomatic objectives from a State-centric perspective. EU studies literature has been even less attentive to the role of HEIs as a corollary of knowledge production and dissemination. Here, science diplomacy has been examined under two rationales: competitiveness concerns in the context of globalization and desires to foster cooperation , that in turn have been embedded within the concepts of Market Power Europe (MPE) or Normative Power Europe (NPE). However, these approaches neglect a third potential form of power, namely “knowledge” power, defined very recently as the "capacity to act in global affairs that allows an actor to affect both relationship and context of global governance by mobilizing knowledge" (Young and Ravinet, 2022). The paper contributes to this panel by looking at the EUI under a (EU) science diplomacy point of view. First, it seeks to develop a new conceptual approach to understand how higher education institutions, including alliances, collaborate and disseminate “knowledge” to pursue diplomatic actions. Second, the paper applies this conceptual framework to the EUI by discussing its role as an informal diplomatic actor. The paper contributes to the panel by looking at the EUI as a diplomatic actor.