Lecture Abstract:

This seminar will introduce Science Diplomacy as a policy domain and practice that puts new content to the notion of ‘soft power’. The EU is paying more and more attention to science diplomacy in its ambitions to be a regional and global actor. A new ambitious research project on science and cultural diplomacy has just been launched and will be presented, together with a case study on Science diplomacy in the ASEM context.

About the Speaker:

Luk Van Langenhove studied psychology and criminology at the VUB where he also obtained his PhD in 1981. He started his career as a researcher at VUB and became Deputy Secretary-General of the Belgian federal ministry of Science Policy in 1992. In 2001 he was appointed founding Director of UNU-CRIS, the Institute for Comparative Regional Integration Studies of the United Nations University in Bruges. From 2008 until 2010 he acted as Vice-President of the International Social Sciences Council.

Since 1 March he is Research professor at the Institute of European Studies (IES at the VUB (Free University of Brussels) and the Scientific Coordinator of the EL-CSID project, a 2.4 million Euros research grant under the Horizon2020 programme. The project will study the potentials of science and cultural diplomacy for the EU’s policies.

He currently also chairs the Academic Board of BACES, the Brussels Academy of China-EU Studies and continues to act as Director of UNU-CRIS in Bruges.