Visiting Scholars – The Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication

April 17, 2024May 16, 2024

The Digital Double Bind: Change and Stasis in the Middle East

By Yvonne Oh, IPDGC Program Coordinator

In his latest book, IPDGC Visiting Scholar Joe F. Khalil explores the interplay of digital technology and socio-political shifts, providing valuable perspectives on the evolving landscape of the Middle East. His presentation of “The Digital Bind: Change and Stasis in the Middle East,” co-authored with Mohamed Zayan.

Khalil explores how the Middle East’s digital turn intersects with complex political, economic, and socio-cultural dynamics. Drawing on local research and rich case studies, they show how the same forces that brought promises of change through digital transformation have also engendered tensions and contradictions. With this book, Khalil and his co-author contend that the ensuing disjunctures have ensnared the region in a double bind, which represents the salient feature of an unfolding digital turn. The same conditions that drive the state, market, and public immersion in the digital also inhibit the region’s drive to change.

Publishing house Oxford Press describes The Digital Double Bind as a book that reconsiders the question of technology and change, moving beyond binary formulations and familiar trajectories of the network society. It offers a path-breaking analysis of change and stasis in the Middle East and provides a roadmap for a critical engagement with digitality in the Global South.

Listen to the podcast on PDx.

April 15, 2024April 23, 2024

A warm welcome to our Visiting Scholar from New Zealand

By Yvonne Oh, IPDGC Program Coordinator

IPDGC welcomes Professor Natalia Chaban, professor in the Department of Media and Communication at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Professor Chaban is a leading expert in image and perceptions studies within the EU and IR contexts, and in public diplomacy and political communication.

As a Visiting Scholar with our Institute, she will be researching “Public diplomacy at times of conflict and crises”, which will allow her to apply and extend her expertise in image and perceptions studies, international political communication and media ecology studies, while considering the three cases informed by her original theorization of the perceptual approach to foreign policy studies.

Professor Chaban has led multiple transnational research projects externally supported by the Erasmus+ of the European Commission, Foreign Policy Instrument Division of the European Commission/European External Action Service, EU member states’ embassies and NATO.

She is also widely published in high impact foreign policy journals such as Journal of Common Market Studies, Cooperation and Conflict, Journal of European Integration and Foreign Policy Analysis.

Our Institute and the wider GW scholarly community look forward to collaborating with Professor Chaban on this very topical and timely research.

February 7, 2024February 28, 2024

Former Visiting Scholar’s Paper on the Limits of International Civil Society Consultations

We received an update from 2023 IPDGC Visiting Scholar Christiane Cromm:

I am delighted to share with you that my article, which I have been
working on during my research stay at GWU, has finally been published with Global Society.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank you all again for
organising and discussing an earlier version of the manuscript. I
believe the article has benefited greatly from your feedback and
immensely valuable comments and I am very grateful for your time.

Her article argues that the opening up of international organisations (IOs) to the participation of civil society organisations (CSOs) has not only failed to dismantle structures of rule. Rather, it should be understood as a perpetuation of rule, re-enacted in and through the everyday practices of IO-CSO interactions in dialogue forums.

See Christiane, Cromm (2024): Speaking the Right Language: Transnational Rule and Symbolic Power in Dialogue Forums, Global Society, DOI:
10.1080/13600826.2024.2305415 (open access)

Christiane is a Ph.D canddiate at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin.

August 2, 2023

PDx Podcast: Visiting Scholar Ben O’Loughlin Discusses a New Paper

2023 IPDGC Visiting Scholar Ben O’Loughlin, Professor of International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London, spent the spring term with IPDGC. Recently, he published a theoretically groundbreaking new paper with co-author Adam B. Lerner: “Strategic Ontologies: Narrative and Meso-Level Theorizing in International Politics.” It ran in International Studies Quarterly.

Our latest PDx podcast features IPDGC William Youmans speaking with O’Loughlin about the paper, which he presented at an IPDGC workshop.

PDx · Ben O’Loughlin , Visiting Scholar: On Strategic Ontologies

April 5, 2023July 12, 2023

Soft Power through Museum Diplomacy

April 5, 2023, 1 – 2pm EST…

Visiting Scholar Dr. Tran Khang from University of Social Sciences and Humanities (USSH), Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Soft Power through Museum Diplomacy: The case study of Vietnam, USA and Japan in telling the story of wars.

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Abstract: Soft power, according to Professor Joseph Nye (Harvard University), is the ability to get what you want by shaping the preferences of others through attractiveness and charisma. In contrast to the coercive nature of hard power, soft power focuses on persuading or telling compelling stories that make countries attractive to the world. Thus, soft power is the ability to use attraction and persuasion to achieve desired goals, with resources coming from cultural characteristics, political ideals, and foreign policy. Using the concept of soft power as a theoretical research orientation, the study analyzes the case studies of Vietnam, USA and Japan in achieving soft power through Museum diplomacy. Museum diplomacy is a way in which countries, through the display of historical artifacts in museums, introduce and promote the images and values of their national identity and culture to the international public. The three museums selected for the talk are the War Remnants Museum, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C, USA; and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, Hiroshima, Japan which are the outstanding museums about war and the violent past. Although the three museums are symbols of hard power and war trauma, but through effective storytelling, they have helped to increase the soft power and improve the sympathy for the three countries in international public.

Please join us for the presentation and discussion.

Event Details
Date: April 5, 2023; 1 – 2pm EST
Venue: Sigur Center for Asian Studies, 1957 E St NW,, Washington, D.C. 20052.

Lunch will be provided.

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April 4, 2023April 11, 2023

Narrating peace in Ukraine-Russia

April 4, 2023; 11:30am-12:30pm [note time change]

The Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication (IPDGC) is pleased to host Visiting Scholar Ben O’Loughlin from Royal Holloway, University of London.

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Ben will present his paper on Narrating peace in Ukraine-Russia: The presence of peace journalism in international news reporting.

Abstract: The war in Ukraine will end, and a settlement will have to be reached. How is this imagined, if at all? Does news media get close to the peace journalism prioritization of negotiated peace and stability, or remain focused on an end point: victory? This paper asks how peace was framed during the first year of the Russia-Ukraine war by conducting media content analysis regarding peace by the leading news sources of the combatant countries (Russia and Ukraine), Western countries that supported Ukraine (US, UK, France, Germany, and New Zealand) and a number of countries that took a more neutral position towards the war (India, South African and Malaysia). It attempts to understand how the narration of peace changed over the first year of the war, what factors and events contributed to these changes, and potential differences in these changes in each country. Finally, the paper examines the framing of the war from a peace journalism angle, which seeks to reframe traditional war reporting by focusing on non-violence (vs violence), the voice of ordinary people (vs elites), truth (vs propaganda) and solutions (vs victory framing). It considers whether peace journalism can contribute in any meaningful way towards finding common ground between the combatants and different actors observing the war, or offer a different narrative altogether that could serve as common ground for resolving the conflict. At the same time, we consider some of the potential pitfalls and limitations of peace journalism in covering such a highly contentious conflict marked by international aggression, war crimes, and disinformation.

Please join us for the presentation and discussion.

Event Details
Date: Tuesday, April 4, 2023; 11:30am-12:30pm ET
Venue: Room 429, School of Media and Public Affairs, 21st Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20052.

Refreshments will be provided.

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