In one of her last acts as America's top diplomat, Clinton launched the Open Book Project (OBP), which will make high-quality educational resources freely available online in the Arabic language.

Stephanie Stallings recently suggested that creative collaboration is a useful model for cultural diplomacy. She is definitely onto something. Circumstances have changed around the work of diplomacy. Publics are now much less distant, more assertive, and actively engaged participants in the making of their encompassing cultural worlds.

Science and technology diplomacy between China and South-East Asian (SEA) countries is expected to benefit both sides, according to a forthcoming OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) report. Rising research and development (R&D) investment on both sides — as well as a common drive towards economic growth and industrialisation — increases the opportunities for improving collaboration, especially on science, innovation and education, the report says.

A couple of weeks ago, I was speaking to a funder from a major philanthropic organisation at the Open Up! conference on international development in London. We acknowledged that philanthropists should be in a position to take more risks, such as funding creative projects that might deliver development outcomes in unexpected ways, because unlike government aid agencies they are not accountable to a nation of taxpayers.

A case study on Israeli citizen diplomacy. 

What can branding in the commercial sector teach us about nation-state image communication?

In October last year, big headlines about two idyllic South Pacific island nations, Tokelau and Tuvalu, which are facing a water crisis, made a splash in the Asia–Pacific region. After six months without rainfall they were running out of fresh water fast and had declared a state of emergency.