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About The Instructor

Bhavna Dahiya

Academic Background

  • Author of two books, recipient of International Emerging Author Award 2024, with 22+ peer-reviewed international publications.

  • Diana Award 2024 among 5+ International Awards. Currently pursuing an Erasmus exchange at Sciences Po (Paris) for a Master’s in International Affairs, after completing Erasmus Summer School in Arms Control and Transfer (University of Trento, Italy).

  • Represented at 15+ international forums on diplomacy, security and culture, and Speaker at COP16 UNCCD Saudi Arabia (TEDx), IRENA Youth Forum, and other high-level dialogues.

  • Selected for Oxford Global Leadership Challenge and St. Gallen Symposium and awarded multiple fully funded grants by the EU, Austria, Hungary, Turkey, and Germany.

  • Foreign Expert with Republic TV International, covering US Elections 2024. Former Visiting Research Scholar at the Serbian Association of International Law and the Moscow Institute of Digital Technologies & Law.

  • Led a 10-week international course with participants from 25+ countries on “Deconstructing politics, identity, and peace in the 21st century” with CSCD

Career Impact

Professional Applications
  • Policy & Diplomacy: Understanding aesthetics as part of statecraft and global discourse.
  • Media & Cultural Studies: Applying IR analysis to film, art, literature, and symbolic politics.
  • Human Rights & Advocacy: Recognizing erasure and silence in narratives of conflict and justice.
  • International Education: Equipping future scholars and diplomats with tools to integrate aesthetics into IR.
Certification Value

Graduates receive an official certification from the Institute for Arts, Diplomacy & Economy, recognizing advanced competency in intellectual security, cultural representation, and aesthetic diplomacy in international relations.

Dialogue as Transformative Practice
About Course and Content

This course examines the intersection of intellectual security, cultural representation, and aesthetics in the study and practice of international relations. Participants will explore how ideas, narratives, and art forms act as instruments of influence, legitimacy, and resistance in world politics.
Through six weeks of critical study, learners will engage with topics ranging from Cold War knowledge wars and symbolic diplomacy to cultural productions, silences in history, and decolonial visions of global futures. The course integrates theory with global case studies, emphasizing how both presence and absence, beauty and power, aesthetics and truth inform international relations today and tomorrow.

Learning Experience Design

Immersive Learning Methodology

  • Case Studies: Explore symbols and aesthetics in statecraft, from Soviet monumentalism to BRICS branding.
  • Textual and Visual Analysis: Read films, novels, art, and music as geopolitical texts.
  • Capstone Project: Present an original framework on aesthetic diplomacy or intellectual security, applying course theories to contemporary global issues.
What Will You learn?
  • Define intellectual security and analyze how truth, narratives, and epistemologies are contested in global politics.
  • Evaluate the diplomatic role of national symbols, monuments, and rituals.
  • Understand the aesthetics of diplomacy through fashion, performance, and cultural expression.
  • Interpret cinema, literature, and music as geopolitical storytelling.
  • Examine silence and absence as political strategies and cultural erasures.
  • Imagine futures of aesthetics in IR, from Afrofuturism to climate-change aesthetics and AI diplomacy.
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Course Details

Weekly Learning Journey
  • Module 1: Who decides the “truth” in world politics? – Intellectual Security 
    Truth and knowledge in IR; Cold War knowledge wars; China’s “discourse power.”
  • Module 2: Symbology of States: Identity and Legitimacy.
     Flags, anthems, seals, and monuments as diplomats
  • Module 3: The Aesthetics of Diplomacy: Aesthetics as extensions of soft power.
     Fashion, performance, and art as diplomatic signaling; Olympic ceremonies, Expos, film festivals.
  • Module 4: Cinematic International Relations: Global politics in novels, films, and songs.
     Films, novels, and music as geopolitical texts; propaganda, resistance, and soft power. 
  • Module 5: The Politics of Silence and Absence
     Silence as strategy; “strategic ambiguity,” erasure and archives; case studies on Taiwan, Palestine, Vatican WWII. 
  • Module 6: The Future of Beauty and Truth in IR
     Neocolonial Mindscapes, Afrofuturism, Indigenous cosmologies, climate aesthetics, AI in aesthetic diplomacy.

Assessment Structure

Portfolio-Based Evaluation (100%)

  • Interactive Participation (20%)
     Active engagement in weekly discussions, simulations, and critical debates on intellectual security, aesthetics, and representation.
  • Thematic Presentation (30%)
     Individual or group presentation analyzing a chosen symbol, artwork, film, or silence as a case study in international relations.

  • Capstone Project (50%)
     Final project where students design and articulate their vision of how ideas, beauty, and representation will shape the future of global politics.

Performance Standards

  • Critical application of IR theory to cultural and aesthetic practices
  • Case study analysis and comparative reflection
  • Integration of aesthetics into political understanding

Course Structure

  • 6 weeks intensive program
  • 1.5 hour live seminar weekly
  • 2–3 hours independent study
  • Case-based, text-based, and practice-oriented methodology
  • Capstone project and presentation
  • Certificate of Completion from CIPE & CSCD