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

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 was published 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)