Women in diplomacy and international relations; Contemporary history of Europe; European integration; Women's rights; Luxembourg; Astrid Lulling; Artlette Conzemius; Viviane Reding; Erna Hennicot Schoepges; Martine Reicherts; Colette Flesch; Madeleine Frieden-Kinen; European Parliament; European Commission; Oral history; Network analysis; Epistemic communities
Abstract :
[en] After the Second World War, as Luxembourg abandoned its neutrality and engaged in international multilateralism and European integration, it adopted a new foreign policy that for many years remained exclusively male-dominated. The recruitment of the first female diplomat in 1973 was preceded by the emergence of Luxembourg’s first female politicians in international relations as elected members of parliament or ministers/members of the government. These forerunners paved the way for a more significant and diverse representation of women in diplomacy, as Members of the European Parliament or the Commission or as senior technocrats. Taking into account the lack of systematic archival sources (the diplomatic archives of the Luxembourg Foreign Ministry deposited in the National Archives only cover the period up to 1973), the oral history is not only an established methodological tool, but also the most appropriate source for creating new content.
Research center :
Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH) > Contemporary European History (EHI)
Disciplines :
History Political science, public administration & international relations Arts & humanities: Multidisciplinary, general & others
Author, co-author :
DANESCU, Elena ; University of Luxembourg > Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH) > Contemporary European History
KLEIN, Francois ; University of Luxembourg > Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH) > Public History and Outreach
Schmit, Anne; Unilu - University of Luxembourg [LU] > MAHEC > Alumnus
External co-authors :
no
Language :
English
Title :
Mapping the Role of Women in Luxembourg Post-War Diplomacy through the Lens of Oral History
Original title :
[en] Mapping the Role of Women in Luxembourg Post-War Diplomacy through the Lens of Oral History
Publication date :
27 May 2023
Event name :
New Diplomatic History Network - 5th Conference, entitled Diplomacy Situated: Settings, Persons, Practices
Event organizer :
University of Turku, Finland The New Diplomatic History Network
The 5th conference of the Network for New Diplomatic History, held in Turku, marked the 10th anniversary of the inaugural NDH conference in Leiden, 2013. After the Aarhus 2021 online conference organised through the brilliant efforts of Karen Gram-Skjöldager, the Turku iteration of our conference was a hybrid event. It allowed a broader participation and, despite a few inevitable hardware problems, worked well as a way to extend the conference’s reach. The conference demonstrated how much our network has been able to establish and consolidate its sub-field during the past decade. The maturity of our network was clearly visible in the volume and quality of the proposals: with 85 individual or group presentations, 4 round table panels, and 3 keynotes, the conference gathered some 150 experts in the various fields of diplomatic studies and new diplomatic history. Amongst those more than 80 were on site in Turku. While diplomatic studies and diplomatic history can be seen as conceptually fuzzy, the conference’s panels proved that a wide variety of approaches have the possibility to communicate and cross-fertilize in their approach to diplomacy and diplomatic practices. The conference was rich in such encounters, and a few scientific one-liners emerged, from diplomacy as a procedural activity to the description of consular services as a global bureaucracy.
The Turku conference continued the trend established in Aarhus of considering specific themes linked to diplomatic history. This time, the conference was dedicated to the study of ‘situated diplomacy’, considering the settings in which and through which diplomacy has been incarnated throughout history, involving sites (real, virtual, fictional), practices, and personas.
