People

Giles Scott-Smith

Professor of Transatlantic Relations

Giles Scott-Smith is Professor of Transatlantic Relations at Leiden University and Academic Director of the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies in Middelburg, The Netherlands. From 2013-2016 he was Chair of the Transatlantic Studies Association. In 2017, as one of the organisers of the New Diplomatic History network, he became one of the founding editors of Diplomatica: A Journal of Diplomacy and Society published with Brill. He is co-editor for the Key Studies in Diplomacy book series with Manchester University Press, and on the editorial board of the Journal of Contemporary History and New Global Studies.

Giles’ research interests broadly cover the ‘Transnational Transatlantic’, referring to the role of non-state actors, transnational networks and public diplomacy in the maintenance of North American-European relations. His research has covered overt and covert Cold War Culture and the Congress for Cultural Freedom (The Politics of Apolitical Culture, 2002), exchange programmes and US soft power (Networks of Empire, 2008), and transnational anti-communism (Western Anti-Communism and the Interdoc Network, 2012). His most recent publications include Campaigning Culture and the Global Cold War: The Journals of the Congress for Cultural Freedom (ed. with Charlotte Lerg) and Global Exchanges: Scholarships and Transnational Circulations in the Modern World (ed. with Ludovic Tournes). He is currently working on a study of ‘diplomatic entrepreneurs’ and citizen diplomacy with the Soviet Union during the late Cold War period.