End of Year Review 2024-25

This academic year has been one of expansion and consolidation for the Society. Having inherited a strong foundation built by the committees beforehand, and with that an impressive network and credited reputation, this Committee was able to continue established practices and develop new initiatives and relationships.

In reality, the Committee started its work before Michaelmas term even began, working to create a term card of speaker events as usual, but also consulting with members of the Board of Excellencies and the former committee to explore what we can improve from the beginning. This essential preparation for the upcoming term allowed for the successful launch of the alumni engagement initiative, the introduction of membership fees, and social media reinvigoration initiative. As a result, from the very beginning of term, expectations were set and consistently met throughout this Committee’s tenure. New social media templates were made and used to actively engage with the membership, improving turnout and outreach; graduating members were able to sign up to the alumni members’ list, retaining many valued members of the community, and given the opportunity to join a number of events both online and in person; and the newly set fees allowed the Society to improve financial stability and made it eligible for university grants, whilst keeping our speaker events open to the public, as per our commitment to open dialogue without barriers.

In Michaelmas term, the Society held 11 individual speaker events and 4 panel events, both independently and in collaboration with a number of other societies. These involved a wide variety of speakers, including both top contenders in the University’s Chancellorship elections ongoing at the time, former and current UN Under-Secretary-Generals, current and former ambassadors, the youngest appointed British Ambassador, and experts from the world’s leading think tanks and NGOs. This notably included a panel discussion with offices from various branches of the British, Swiss, and German military, with the Swiss and German speakers traveling to Oxford as official delegations; the event was included a dinner after the panel, and was the culmination of an international-level collaboration between three separate societies and the Society’s partners.

Our subsequent term cards reflected this initial success, leading to a broad variety of events with singular or multiple speakers, partnering with other societies and organisations, as well as a large spectrum of diplomacy-oriented subjects, including but not limited to: climate diplomacy; defence; geopolitics; cyber security; military-civilian relations; grassroots diplomacy; peacekeeping; digital diplomacy; regionalised topics; peace mediation; international law, and the intersection between UK law and diplomacy; internal EU diplomacy; education; entrepreneurship and business diplomacy; humanitarian issues; North Korean smuggling networks; ECOWAS diplomacy; and terrorism and proxy warfare. The Society also hosted talks with the former Prime Minister of Slovakia, Eduard Heger, and his Minister of Defence, Jaroslav Naď, organised workshops for the general membership, and held admissions talks with the Georgetown School of Foreign Services; we also co-organised over 5 socials with other societies.

The Society was also keen on maintaining previously established programmes. The Diplomatic Dispatch successfully completed its second full year of publication, from No. 14 to No. 19, which covered six regions, and both persisting issues and currently ongoing crises and events, including the US Presidential elections and the war in Gaza. The Dispatch made the decision to reduce the number of publications made a term, and rather focus on quality, which yielded fantastic results, both in the articles submitted by students and guest writers, which included former and current diplomats, journalists (including from the Economist and Financial Times), members of the intelligence community, think tankers, and faculty and fellows from both the University of Oxford and other institutions. The Society also continued and expanded the Diplomatic Academy established last year to include all the previous workshops, but also create a new section for Mediation & Conflict Resolution to function as a way for the cohort to practise their ad hoc diplomacy skills. We are proud to say that many of our instructors have stayed on the programme, reporting satisfaction and support for the initiative.

In spirit with continuation and expansion, the Society also repeated last year’s efforts to offer our members the opportunity to experience diplomacy first hand by organising and facilitating excursions domestically and abroad. These included visits to the Jordanian and German embassies, and the facilitation of several trips abroad, including the second iteration of last year’s trip to Pakistan, as well as excursions to China, Bolivia, and Nepal. These international trips included working with several British embassies, international organisations, business partners, and local institutions, whilst our domestic embassy visits were organised with the help of individual members of the Committee and Rawan Al Faqir, the Deputy Head of Mission at the Jordanian Embassy and a distinguished member of our Board of Excellencies. The Society is also proud to have included alumni members in each of our trips.

We also continued our participation in the London Diplomatic Ball, and last year’s efforts to expand the London University Diplomatic Summit to also include an Oxbridge Day, which was able to be achieved with our partners from the Cambridge Journal of Political Affairs and King’s Politics. Lastly, the Society maintained and deepened its relationship with the Diplomatic Studies Programme at the University, joining them and co-hosting a number of events throughout the year. Dr. Yolanda Spies, the Director of the programme, has also kindly accepted our humble request to become our new Senior Member after Tom Fletcher stepped down from his position as Principal of Hertford to pursue his role as Under-Secretary General of OCHA; His Excellency, Thomas Fletcher has accepted our offer to retain his position on our Board of Excellencies and continues receiving updates on the Society’s progress.

In order to expand the range of opportunities for our members, the Society also engaged in a number of partnership-building endeavours, including agreeing a reciprocal membership agreement with the RUSI NextGen Programme, which allows members of both organisations to attend each other’s respective events. It also expanded to related sectors, which included establishing a strong connection with Farrer & Co., who hosted the Society in their offices in London for a dinner and joined us in Oxford for a presentation and a networking session. The Society also signed a memorandum with the Institute of Rural Development in Nepal, which was co-founded by Asmod Khakurel, who kindly organised the Society’s excursion to Nepal. Our members also had the privilege to sign up for our exclusive internship scheme with the Ditchley Foundation, which was organised by our Alumni Officer, Jacek Sagatowski.

Finally, the Society proudly functioned as a key facilitator and co-founder for two highly prestigious initiatives. Firstly, the Society was approached by Maitre Yves-Justice Djimi, the Co-Founder of the Entente Cordiale Day Association, who presented us with letters from His Majesty, King Charles III, and the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, delegating the creation of an inter-university competition between the top institutions in each respective country to the Lord of Salisbury. The Society had an instrumental role in the creation of this initiative by bringing together representatives of the student diplomatic communities of each participating University, which comprised the Student Management Board; securing Vice-Chancellor Dr. Irene Tracy’s support for the initiative; and connecting the association with business partners who were able to assist in the fundraising process. We are also proud to have had three teams with members of the Society become finalists in the competition, including the eventual winners of the top prize. Secondly, the Society became one of the three founding members of the Youth Association for Peace and Diplomacy (YIAPD), a truly global organisation aiming to bridge the gap between youth organisations - primarily university societies - and enable cooperation that transcends borders with the hopes of furthering the association’s goals of peace and diplomacy. The first ever meeting of the YIAPD was held in Oxford and proudly hosted by the Society, and culminated in the establishment of the Founding Membership and Oxford FMP Agreement of 2025. Since then, the YIAPD’s flagship Annual Summit was hosted by the Moroccan Diplomatic Society at the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University in Rabat during the summer vacation, which members of the society had the opportunity to attend for a discounted fee, and concluded this Committee's year of events.

This Committee’s academic year has been one of my busiest and most certainly most eventful years of my life. I am incredibly proud of the achievements we have collectively been able to accomplish, and look forward to seeing how the subsequent committee, and eventually their successors, are able to continue and build the Society. I have the utmost faith in the incoming Executive Committee, who have proven their competency and dedication time and time again as members of the Society and Sub-Committee this year, as well as through their long list of achievements preceding involvement with the Society

I can only wish them the best of luck, and hope my and my Committee’s efforts are engraved into the institutional heritage of the Oxford Diplomatic Society.

Thank you everyone, for your hard work.

Michał L. Pietrzak

President 2024-25