This project reconsiders British diplomacy from the perspective of the everyday interactions with other diplomatic entities that are prior to, and shape, foreign policy formation. It does so through a series of historical snapshots of moments when new 'outside' elements were incorporated into the British diplomatic apparatus. Produced through archival research and interviews, these snapshots together provide a different picture of the way foreign policy is produced than is usually presented. The first historical snapshot is of the creation of the Foreign Office itself, in the late eighteenth century. Prior to this there had been two secretaries of state, each of whom had domestic and international responsibilities. The creation of the Foreign Office involved producing everyday bureaucratic procedures and interactions among those previously attached to the two secretaries, and constituted for the first time a coherent approach to that which was beyond the kingdom's borders. This understanding of foreign policy, as the coherent, rational decision-making emanating from within a specialized bureaucracy, remains popular to today - both within the FCO and outside of it. The remaining historical snapshots serve to problematize this account, as they entail the steady incorporation of 'outside elements' into the foreign policy apparatus. The first of these is the implementation of intelligence sharing in the post-WWII context, first with the United States and later with other allies such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. From this point on, British foreign policy would be premised on a slate of information shared among a group of states. That these states were like-minded in some way prior to the agreement is obviously true. But the everyday sharing of intelligence serves to predispose these states further to like-mindedness, given a common set of understandings of what is going on in the world. Other historical moments widen this circle of collaboration, such as the creation of NATO and its principle of interoperability (by which allies prepare to act in common, both in terms of infrastructure and procedures) and the creation of the EU's External Action Service (which attempts to coordinate member state's foreign policies, both centrally and among EU embassies 'in country'). While none of these dictate UK foreign policy, and clearly there are moments of divergence (e.g., the Iraq War), they nonetheless hint at the ways in which British diplomacy can be understood to be integrated with other diplomatic actors in an everyday sense, meaning that the 'outside' is already 'inside' before any formal diplomacy occurs. This theoretical shift towards everyday diplomacy is important because it hints at the possibility that a loose group of states (often referred to as 'the West') have enmeshed their foreign policy apparatuses in ways that predispose them to (but do not require) collective action. Just as a group of people can congeal into a crowd, with their micro-scaled interactions resonating to create collective actions (like a crowd becoming a mob) without each individual losing the sense of their own agency, we might imagine everyday diplomatic interactions as productive of just such a collective. This is particularly important, as the final snapshot is of the First Class Foreign Policy Programme, an attempt to, among other things, advance the meaning of 'digital diplomacy' by integrating internet-based expertise into foreign policy formation processes. This ongoing effort promises to incorporate non-state elements into the British foreign policy apparatus. Therefore, understanding how these micro-scaled interactions might resonate and shape international relations is of paramount importance.

The international challenges facing British society today underline the crucial importance of understanding the nature and dynamics of world politics. International historians must play a role in furthering this understanding. The Practice of International History in the Twenty-First Century will create an international research network comprised of historians, international relations specialists and officials from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The core objective is to establish an inter-disciplinary forum for collective reflection on the nature and practice of international history and its role in contributing to wider British society. The research network will include leading scholars from the UK, the European continent, North America and Australia. It will be made up of established researchers, PhD students, post-docs and early career scholars. This will provide a framework to allow UK-based international historians to make an important contribution to wider debates on the current and future state of our field. The past two decades have seen the emergence of fundamental challenges to the philosophical and methodological underpinnings of international history. Advocates of a 'cultural turn' have argued for greater attention to race, gender, religion and collective memory as a means of deepening our understanding of international politics. The emergence of 'transnational' history has presented a different kind of challenge that rejects the nation-state as the focus of analysis to concentrate on the flow of people, ideas and technologies across what are in many ways arbitrary national frontiers. This 'transnational turn' complements a turn away from 'Eurocentric' historical approaches that is a central feature of the new 'global history'. Debates among international relations [IR] theorists over the relative importance of ideas, institutions and material power have the potential to further enrich the work of international historians. A final challenge to practices in our field is the need to engage more fruitfully and systematically with the UK policy community in general, and with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office [FCO] in particular. International historians in North America and Europe have recently been active in addressing the implications of the issues raised above for the practice of international history. Scholars in the UK have been far less active. This project will provide a framework for redressing this silence while at the same time creating structures for ongoing engagement with the policy community as well as teachers of international history at all levels from schools to postgraduate university courses. A number of core questions have been identified to provide a conceptual framework for four one-day workshops. Historians and IR specialists from the UK, Europe, North America and Australia and FCO officials will participate in these workshops. The chief 'outputs' produced by the project will be a 'state of the field' collection of essays, an inter-active web-based resource for teaching and research in the history of international relations and durable structures for engagement with policy stakeholders. Achieving these aims will leave the present and future generations of international historians better-equipped to teach, research and to contribute more effectively to meeting the ever-changing international challenges of our time.

India

The early-modern period was foundational for modern diplomacy. Yet it was an age of religious turmoil and increasing globalization. How did diplomatic actors overcome barriers of language, religion, and culture to interact with each other? How did they use non-verbal languages (art, rituals, and space)? These are the central problems addressed by the network. They also provide a key to engagment with current practice in two senses. First, modern diplomacy faces seemingly comparable issues: challenges such as the 'Arab Spring', and even Wikileaks, have questioned a view that diplomacy is grounded on a shared understanding of international relations, especially on what constitutes a state and who controls state information. Accordingly, what can we learn today from early-modern diplomats who faced similar challenges? Equally, what can scholars learn from the experiences of contemporary diplomats dealing with 'new' states (e.g. Iraq and Afghanistan) and with cross-cultural relations. Secondly, the interdisciplinary network will eschew narrowly political accounts of diplomacy. It will bring together established scholars and early-career researchers from history, modern languages, anthropology, art and architectural history, legal history, and international relations. It will also involve members of the heritage sector (e.g. English Heritage). Together, we will analyze the social and cultural processes that contribute to creating a global diplomatic community. These aims and objectives will be examined through four themes: Translating cultures How did peoples of different political and religious persuasions find common diplomatic ground? Our period was of critical importance in the history of cross-cultural relations - issues of enormous sensitivity today - as Europeans frequently engaged with 'others': Muslim, African and Asian powers, as well as competing confessions following the Reformation. Who were best qualified to bridge cultural and confessional boundaries - merchants, artists, scientists, translators? Symbolic languages We will assess the power of diplomatic rituals and symbols - did shared understandings emerge of how diplomats should be treated and how they should interact? What happened when rituals were challenged? Could rituals re-define the very notion of sovereignty? The non-textual languages of diplomacy included space and material culture. How did diplomats move through palaces and charged political spaces? What access did they have to each other and to sovereigns? How were diplomatic gifts and the exchange of art interpreted? The methodologies for studying diplomatic practice How can researchers from different disciplines and countries learn from each other and develop a robust methodological framework for the area of study? Ideas will be shared through a dedicated website and the outcomes disseminated through an edited volume. We aim to ensure that the network leads to future collaborative work beyond the life of the AHRC funding. Between the early-modern and modern worlds To what extent are current problems comparable to, or different from, those faced by early-modern diplomatic actors? What can early-modern scholars learn from current practitioners of diplomacy and vice-versa? Also, how can we re-interpret material culture through the study of early-modern diplomacy? The network's potential beneficiaries will include the academic sector, the FCO and the heritage sector. First, the network will serve as a unique international hub for various research projects that are currently taking place around Europe, encompassing established and early-career researchers. The FCO and the academic network will gain mutual insights into diplomatic practice through understanding the early-modern 'models' and their contemporary counterparts. The heritage sector will benefit by fresh interpretations of assets such as palaces and other items of material culture, forming potentials for future collaboration

Neural interfaces are devices that interact directly with the nervous system, bypassing the usual sensory and motor modalities. Such devices have a number of clinical applications, in particular as neural prostheses designed to replace functions lost through neural injury or disease. One of the most successful neural prostheses is the cochlear implant, which has restored hearing in around 150,000 people worldwide and works by converting sound directly into electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve. Researchers in the UK and Japan are working on new applications for neural interfaces, for example retinal implants to treat blindness, or Brain-Machine Interfaces to allow paralysed patients to control computers or assistive devices via signals derived directly from the brain. However, considerable challenges remain, for example developing biocompatible electrodes that can safely be implanted into patients, and understanding how information is encoded by signals in the brain. We are organising a two-day workshop which will allow ten leading UK researchers and ten Japanese counterparts to present reports on their work. As well as disseminating the latest research findings, the workshop will be a forum for discussions to identify key scientific and technological requirements for developing successful neural interfaces in order to promote international collaboration. Such collaborations will help maintain the UK's place as a world-leader in neurotechnology, as well as stimulating new research leading to clinical devices that could help a considerable patient population.