Liaison officers avant la lettre Blog Edwina Hagen
'Madame l'ambassadrice' was a household name during the revolutionary period at the end of the eighteenth century. At balls, dinners and concerts at the European royal courts, diplomats' wives, as well as their husbands and the wives of statesmen, princes and aristocrats, were among the official guests. It was there that they had plenty of room for lobbying, advising and informally influencing political decision-making in the interest of their own country.
These 'liaison officers' avant la lettre often continued to write to each other after they left for their next place of employment. Their correspondence networks show that they kept the channels of communication open at a time when European diplomacy was under high tension. The current state of the world calls for the use of similar forms of soft power. Scholars can also make a difference in this.
“The current state of the world calls for comparable forms of soft power."
Communicating and meeting
That is not their primary responsibility; they do not have to become diplomats and not all disciplines lend themselves to such a role. What matters is that they can continue to do what they have always done for as long as possible: communicate with each other about issues that are important to the Netherlands and the rest of the world, within and across the boundaries of their field and even beyond our geographical borders. And not only by talking to each other online, but also by meeting each other in person – in places that have been specially designed for this purpose. On territory and in buildings free of direct political significance. Where there is time and space for scientifically based conversations with other intrinsically driven experts and where there is free access to professional libraries, archives and state-of-the-art research facilities.
Strategically diversified
This is precisely the strength of the location-based and cross-border education and research of the Dutch Scientific Institutes Abroad.
These NWIBs are advanced posts of six Dutch universities for and by Dutch students and researchers and foreign guest researchers. The Dutch campuses are strategically spread across key regions around the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe, in the cities of Cairo, Athens, Florence, Rome and Saint Petersburg.
Added value
Traditionally, the focus areas have been archaeology, ancient studies and (art) history. Nowadays, there is just as much room within the institutes for knowledge utilisation from academia across the board. Their decades-long permanent presence on the ground and firmly anchored in university, museum, administrative and diplomatic partnerships of the host countries is an added value, especially in today's digitally connected academic world (open access, AI).
Unique infrastructure
The strength of the NWIBs lies not only in the individual institutes and their own extensive national and international knowledge networks, but also in their joint operations. Together they offer a unique infrastructure of academic access points. This makes the network of lasting value for research, education and diplomacy ─ just like that of 'Madame l'ambassadrice' in the past.
Dr Edwina Hagen is Assistant Professor of Cultural History at VU Amsterdam and heads the Secretariat of the Netherlands Scientific Institutes Abroad (NWIB). Her current research focuses mainly on the interaction between culture and power in the Dutch political sphere and within the Western European context where politics, court culture and diplomacy come together and covers the second half of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century.
magazine for social sciences and humanities alumni december 2025