This series begins with a set of questions which UN peacekeepers, aid workers, governments, researchers and conflict analysts are increasingly troubled by: how do we know what we know about fragile and conflict-affected regions and how far do our understandings reflect - and take account of - the views and perspectives of communities living in these regions? Bringing together leading scholars and partners in the worlds of policy and practice - including Save the Children, the UK Government (DFID and FCO), OECD and Somalia NGO Consortium (Somalia NGOC), Nairobi - the series will provide a critical and innovative set of fora for analysing how conflict knowledge is generated and disseminated - and with what implications for research and policy in the UK and abroad. This exploration comes in the context of a growing focus by Western governments and organizations on working on, and in, fragile and conflict-affected regions. The UK Government - now legally committed to spending at least 0.7% of GNI on international development - has steadily re-focused its aid portfolio around fragile states since the later 2000s and these countries now absorb over one-third of the DFID budget. Similar trends are apparent among other Western aid donors and organizations as well as among NGOs and researchers whose funding is often tied to these bodies and their agendas. Along with the UN, the militaries of developing states are also increasingly involved in peacekeeping and statebuilding exercises in fragile regions and polities. Alongside these developments, however, have emerged a number of issues which actively limit Western actors' ability to gain direct access to - and understandings of - communities living in fragile contexts. The growing number of UN and aid workers now being targeted by criminal and terrorist groups in conflict zones has led most Western organizations to introduce risk management procedures which ultimately reduce direct interaction between the 'international' and the 'local'. This includes the creation of heavily-fortified aid 'compounds' to house aid workers and their families, the collection of data from afar (via drones or other technologies, for example) and the remote management of projects. Thus DFID's Somalia Office (a Project Partner for the series) is based in neighbouring Kenya. This culture of risk aversion has also steadily come to curtail the ability of Western researchers and NGOs to live and work in regions viewed as too remote or dangerous by insurance providers, ethics committees or managers. Thus these communities also increasingly rely on ever-distant chains of 'local' interlocutors and mediators to gather data or implement projects - in a Western political context where ensuring clear and measurable developmental results for all aid disbursed is paramount. This series of research seminars will pose and engage with several key questions and concerns which emerge from these various paradoxes. Most prominently - what tools and methodologies can be used to collect conflict data remotely and to what extent can they replace or substitute more direct forms of information-gathering? To what extent can - or should - different social and cultural understandings be reflected in the collection and interpretation of 'local knowledge'? What role do local actors play in mediating or resisting the generation of knowledge on - and in - their communities? How is conflict 'data' transposed into conflict 'knowledge' and how far does Western policy and research on conflict regions take account of local perspectives? The series engages with a prominent set of debates in contemporary policy-making circles and global scholarship across a range of disciplines, notably Politics, International Relations, Development Studies, Economics and Anthropology. The participation of early-career researchers and scholars from the developing world is a key focus of the series and enhances its strength and credibility.

This project concerns the intellectual framework applied by civil servants (permanent officials) who formulated British and French foreign policy between 1919 and 1957 and how they decided whether an integrated European approach to international security was preferable to a more traditional single state strategy. Research on the history of European integration has tended to focus on policy at government level; little attention has been given to how policy was formulated and executed within foreign ministries and certainly not in any comparative way. And yet, the core political and diplomatic assumptions of the permanent officials should be intrinsic to our understanding of how the British and French foreign ministries, or networks within them, saw Europe as a solution to maintaining their international influence. We will also demonstrate how civil servants, including diplomats, reflected the value systems of those who appointed them and those who trained them, although it is not always true that they reflected the priorities of the government ministers whom they served. Even though Britain and France became members of the European Community at different moments, they have been chosen because they are nation-states of similar populations, with similar imperial histories and world roles, they are both permanent members of the UN Security Council, leading members of NATO and of the EU. Nevertheless, historically these two countries have viewed the concept of European security and integration differently, with Britain placing more emphasis on the importance of overseas ties (Empire, Commonwealth, US) than the French have chosen to do. The British and French examples reveal how within the machinery of government of these states different views were held by politicians, permanent officials and diplomats about how far a commitment should be made to Europe as part of their wider foreign and imperial policy. The consensus among historians of British foreign relations is of an either/or contest between a continental and an imperial strategy, when in reality both views were held simultaneously by different groupings of permanent officials, diplomats and their political masters. The French case is similar. In France competing views were held by politicians and networks of officials about how to provide the security necessary for France to continue to play an imperial and world role. While some believed her security lay, as before the First World War, in a more loosely based network of alliances, others were increasingly committed to an institutional form of European integration. Very little work has been done on the process by which the permanent officials of the foreign ministries of European states considered the question of European integration; when this has been done it tends to be in relation to Cold War strategic questions. Even fewer studies are to be found on European integration prior to the Second World War; and no works of a comparative nature consider foreign policy-making and the influence of networks in relation to the European ideal in the French Foreign Ministry or British Foreign and Commonwealth Office(FCO). This work has considerable benefits for policy makers in the FCO, the French Foreign Ministry and in the European Commission. It is a current FCO priority to understand better the historical perspective on present-day policies to which this project would contribute. It would also be of great benefit to those engaged in the study and formulation of foreign policy amongst all EU members and future accession countries. It is our intention to use our research as the basis for a series of workshops for British and French diplomats and permanent officials as well as organisations that liaise with the EU such as the United Kingdom Permananent Representation to the European Union (UKREP).

Elizabeth II is head of state in nine independent Caribbean nations. The survival of the British monarchy in the region is remarkable, but there has been no sustained, comparative investigation into this continuity. This is the first study to place the political, legal and constitutional function of the Crown alongside cultural and popular perceptions of Elizabeth in each of her Caribbean 'realms'. When Elizabeth visits St Lucia, how is the 'Queen of St Lucia' received? What would a history of Elizabeth, Queen of Jamaica reveal? The project begins in 1952, with the accession of Elizabeth II, and ends at the present day. It moves from decolonisation and the achievement of independence, to constitutional reform efforts and current debates on the future of the Crown in the Caribbean. It thinks about monarchy as an institution, and about the embodiment of that institution in the person of Elizabeth. As such, the project seeks to better explain the durability of monarchy in the Caribbean since the end of empire. As the Queen's 68-year reign draws to a close, this timely project engages with important questions about the legacy of her reign, the relationship between Britain and its former Caribbean colonies - a relationship that has come under intense scrutiny following the Windrush scandal - and the future of the Crown elsewhere in the Commonwealth. The project, uniquely, addresses all nine Caribbean 'realms': Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines. It also considers the three countries that opted to become republics: Dominica, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago. The project brings together political historians, political scientists, cultural historians, and oral history practitioners. The political strand examines the Crown as a legal and constitutional entity, exploring how monarchy was conceptualised, and the role the Queen herself may have played, during critical episodes over the last 70 years. The cultural strand focusses on the visibility and performance of monarchy, emphasising the person of Elizabeth II. It investigates how the Queen has been represented: in portraiture, pageantry and regional literature. It highlights the tradition of the royal tour and will collate material related to every royal visit made to the Caribbean realms since 1952. Perceptions of the most recent visits will be captured through social media analysis, such as the #notmyprince thread in response to Prince Harry's 2016 tour. Finally, the project will generate original and highly valuable research data through a first-ever region-wide survey on popular attitudes to the Queen and monarchy, and targeted interviews with governors general, politicians, Palace officials, civil servants and a representative cross-section of the general public from across the region. Through excavating such a wide evidence base, the project will advance knowledge of the Queen and intervene in debates about the history and current state of monarchy in the Caribbean, and its possible futures. It will test assumptions about the survival of monarchy in the region - such as the idea that republicanism will inevitably prevail - and will unpack the complex nature of support and opposition. The project is distinctive for balancing hitherto dominant Palace and Whitehall-oriented accounts with overlooked Caribbean perspectives and sources. It departs from many studies of modern monarchy by bringing a long historical view to its analysis of queenship, empire and royal traditions. Academic and public audiences will be reached through the project's published outputs and dissemination activities organised with our project partners. These include policy briefings at Whitehall; training history teachers in collaboration with the Historical Association; public memory-sharing days; an exhibition; and a television documentary.

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.

This project critically examines the advancement, projection, and negotiation of "values" by Western aid donor officials in Africa. Defined here as ethical and normative principles that influence and inform political beliefs, interactions, and policies, "values" have always undergirded Western aid relationships with Africa. They have, however, recently received renewed emphasis in the policies of many Western states. Prominent among these is the UK - the focus of this study - where ministers have presented the promotion of values - "British" or otherwise - as a key plank of ensuring that post-Brexit "Global Britain" retains international influence. For "frontline" UK officials in Africa - in the case of "national" staff, African citizens themselves - this presents fundamental challenges. Donor officials are expected to uphold international aid effectiveness norms on partnership and recipient "ownership" of aid. The same officials are also, however, under domestic (UK) pressure to champion (notional) UK values abroad. In some cases, these values may be shared by African interlocutors. In others, however, UK - and other Western - officials and African stakeholders may take directly oppositional stances, departing sharply from a partnership approach. Moreover, some non-Western powers have sought to undercut Western influence through presenting their own engagement as respectful of African sovereignty. This has intersected with criticisms by African leaders of Western value promotion as "neo-colonial meddling", inconsistent, and hypocritical, which resonate with many African peoples. A recent example of how these pressures play out can be found in the international response to Uganda's draconian 2023 "Anti-Homosexuality Bill". Western officials' public condemnations were rejected by Ugandan policymakers as "arrogant" and "imperialist", while rumours of Western aid cuts were met with assurances from Beijing that Chinese aid would remain without "political strings". This project will interrogate how UK officials in Africa experience and seek to balance such challenges, constraints, and countervailing forces in their everyday work and interactions. Drawing on research in Cameroon, Kenya, Rwanda, and South Africa, the research will combine interviews, oral history, focus-group discussions, (non-/)participant observation and archival research to answer the following questions: How are "values" understood by UK officials in Africa - and by African host governments, NGOs and civil society groups, and other aid donors? How do both UK officials and their in-country interlocutors assess the effectiveness, or even desirability, of value promotion? Moreover, how does the meaning, significance, and prioritization of different values evolve for UK officials themselves, and with what implications? The research will significantly advance our knowledge of the critical role of frontline diplomatic and development staff in the negotiation of deeply sensitive and consequential areas of policy (dis)agreement and exchange. In doing so, it will refocus scholarly attention on the normative and relational dimensions of UK-Africa policy, including the wider question of what kind of "partner" post-Brexit Britain wishes to present itself as in Africa - a continent which receives over half of UK bilateral aid. Informed by an on-going engagement with practitioners from Africa, the UK, and elsewhere from inception, the research will illuminate the circumstances under which UK - and, by extension, wider Western - donor engagement can effectively amplify the work of African activists. Equally, the research will underline how and when UK and Western value promotion can not only be problematic, but actually backfire, undermining the interests of both the UK and African partners.