“The generous support offered for our new collaborative institute will enable cutting-edge research in some of the most important and consequential questions of modern statecraft and diplomacy. This is an exciting new opportunity for us to develop a rising generation of talented doctoral students and early-career scholars through a collaborative and supportive international cohort that will enrich our intellectual communities and strengthen our collective ability to address pressing international problems.”
Dr Maeve Ryan and Professor John Bew, Co-Directors of the Centre for Grand Strategy
14 December 2021
Centre for Grand Strategy founding partner in new international institute for statecraft and diplomacy
The new Institute will encourage innovative approaches to solving complex global challenges
The Centre for Grand Strategy (CGS) in the Department of War Studies, King's College London, is a founding partner in a new international institute focused on solving complex challenges in statecraft and diplomacy.
Alongside CGS, the new Ax:son Johnson Institute for Statecraft and Diplomacy (AJI)’s members include the Centre for Geopolitics at the University of Cambridge, the Henry A Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in America, and the Center for Statecraft and Political Communication at the Stockholm School of Economics.
Funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit in Stockholm, AJI is a collaboration between the foundation and a transatlantic consortium of organisations dedicated to supporting and mentoring scholars and practitioners in statecraft, strategy, and diplomacy.
Over the next four years AJI will support up to 12 PhD students and 24 postdoctoral fellows across the four founding institutions.
The new institute will encourage innovative approaches to critical global challenges, bringing the historically-informed study of strategy and diplomacy into dialogue with the most urgent and important issues facing practitioners and policymakers around the world.
Applications for PhD and Post-doc positions will be launching in 2022.
Executive Dean of the Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy, Professor Frans Berkhout said:
“We’re delighted to be part of this powerful international network, which will allow King’s to extend its innovative and influential research on international relations and security”
Head of the Department of War Studies, Professor Michael Goodman said:
“I'm pleased our Centre for Grand Strategy is to be part of such a prestigious, global institute, which will enable us to forge meaningful transatlantic collaboration and lead to opens exciting new opportunities.
"I also look forward to welcoming the next generation of historically minded scholars in statecraft, strategy, and diplomacy into the War Studies community. We encourage those passionate about historically-minded scholarship to join us!"
About the Foundation
The Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit is a foundation based in Stockholm devoted to funding and supporting scholarly research, and in particular the advancement of international, interdisciplinary debate in the humanities and social sciences to the benefit of Sweden and the international community.
Centre for Grand Strategy
The Centre for Grand Strategy seeks to bring a greater degree of historical and strategic expertise to statecraft, diplomacy and foreign policy. Through a series of research projects, external engagement activities and a number of undergraduate and executive education teaching programmes, the Centre focuses on “knowledge transfer”: bringing top-class academic expertise to bear on the policy-making process and the public debate about foreign policy.