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DiploFoundation and University of Malta 
Master/Postgraduate Diploma in Contemporary Diplomacy

The popular Master/Postgraduate Diploma in Contemporary Diplomacy provides diplomats and other international relations professionals an opportunity to continue studies while remaining on the job. The programme lasts 1.5 - 2 years and includes a 10-day residential workshop in Malta followed by online learning. To read more, visit the programme webpage.
Application deadline: October 15, 2009.


 
Formerly a university teacher, I am now a freelance writer specialising in the theory and practice of diplomacy from the earliest times until the present. As well as hoping to encourage the study of diplomacy, this site provides periodic updating of two of my books.


Diplomacy: Theory and Practice
Online updating3rd edn, (Palgrave-Macmillan: Basingstoke and New York, 2005)
ISBN 1-4039-9311-4 (pbk)

'Highly recommended' reading for employees of all US foreign affairs agencies

CLICK HERE FOR ONLINE UPDATING
Most recent update: 12 February 2008

A Dictionary of Diplomacy
Online updating(with Alan James), 2nd edn
(Palgrave-Macmillan: Basingstoke and New York, 2003)
ISBN 1-4039-1536-9 (pbk)

CLICK HERE FOR ONLINE UPDATING
Most recent update: 21 July 2008


To enable regular visitors to identify new material, the latest updates are entered in red.

 
NEWS AND VIEWS

New book published !

My latest book, Tilkidom and the Ottoman Empire: The Letters of Gerald Fitzmaurice to George Lloyd, 1906-1915, has just been published by The Isis Press, Istanbul. Read more about this here.
[23 July 2008]

Latest book review

John W. Young, Twentieth-Century Diplomacy: A Case Study of British Practice, 1963-1976
[review] [buy this book]
[19 February 2009]

Foreign language translations

Diplomacy: Theory and Practice [Chinese edition]My textbook, Diplomacy: Theory and Practice, is available in Chinese, translated by Dr Pang Zhongying, Director of the Institute of Global Issues at Nankai University and published by Peking University Press (PUP); in Croatian, translated by Ksenija JuriÅ¡ic and published in the Political Thought Series (Biblioteka Politicka Misao) of the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Zagreb; and in Greek, published by Editions Tourikis. Translations into Serbian, Albanian, and Macedonian are in the pipeline.
[01 July 2009]

Diplomatic Theory from Machiavelli to Kissinger [Croation edition]Diplomatic Theory from Machiavelli to Kissinger was published in Croatian by Biblioteka Politicka Misao in October 2005, and is also to be published in Albanian by Libraria 'Dukagjini'.
 

Diplomatic Classics: Selected texts from Commynes to Vattel was published in English by Peking University Press in 2009.
 

Malgorzata van de Westelaken, Foreign Rights Consultant of Palgrave-Macmillan, would be pleased to hear from anyone interested in undertaking or promoting translations of these works into other languages.
[01 July 2009]

Need an MA dissertation or PhD thesis topic?

As regular visitors will know, I have a page on this site called Postgraduate research required on contemporary diplomacy. This has proved one of the most popular pages, so I have just overhauled and expanded it. However, I should add two cautions. First, the list of topics is not meant to be exhaustive: it is just a list of topics that have occurred to me as being under or poorly researched. Secondly, there is of course always room for a fresh (‘revisionist’) look at topics which may seem adequately or even ‘over researched’. After all, knowledge advances via the constant challenging of conventional wisdom, either on internal grounds or in the light of newly discovered source material – or, more usually, both.
[12 October 2007]

Writing essays

Most university departments provide advice on this subject, publishers have got into it in a big way, and there is of course ample advice elsewhere on the internet. Nevertheless, I feel moved to make a few contributions of my own on points that I have found to present particular problems to students. As a result, I have just started a new section and launch it with a short note on how to tackle comparative essay questions. I shall follow it with one on 'introductions' when I have the time.
[26 November 2007]



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This site was originally designed by Simon Kear