The School of Law and the Cyprus Center for European and International Affairs of the University of Nicosia
would like to invite you to the
ONLINE Research Seminar
EXERCISES IN BRITISH INFLUENCE THROUGH CULTURAL FORCES: THE CASE OF THE BRITISH COUNCIL IN CYPRUS IN THE 1950S
By
Dr Maria Hadjiathanasiou
MSCA (Widening) Research Fellow at the Department of Politics and Governance, University of Nicosia
Wednesday, 31 March 2021
11:30 – 13:00
Chair: Dr Andreas Kirlappos, Part-time Faculty and Research Associate
University of Nicosia
Abstract
‘Perhaps, it is best to appeal to this politically troubled island through music, art and medicine which transcend politics’, the British Council Representative in Cyprus wrote in his Annual Report for 1950/51. This presentation examines the above statement, seeking to find what it practically meant in late colonial Cyprus during the critical decade of the 1950s, that ended with an anti-colonial liberation struggle against British imperialism. A historical network of cultural agents and their considerations and actions toward a specific ‘target’ people (the Cypriots), using a specific tool (cultural diplomacy), is retraced here through archival research, attempting to reveal a missing history for the functions, visions and interpretations of what was ‘cultural diplomacy’, what its aims were and how and if it accomplished its mandate in the specific context of pre-independence Cyprus. The research presented here is part of larger two-year Horizon 2020 research project that explores British, Greek and Turkish cultural diplomacy in Cyprus, from the end of the Second World War in 1945 to the Turkish invasion of 1974.
*R.S.V.P. until March 30, 12:00 noon by e-mail: cceia@unic.ac.cy
**Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85455687998
