Religion and world affairs: informing foreign policymakers and practitioners

2019 Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom
2019 Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom (Credit: Ralph Alswang/US Department of State on flickr)

In the five years since its founding in 2015, the Cambridge Institute on Religion & International Studies (CIRIS) had a significant impact on knowledge and practice in the field of religion and world affairs.

CIRIS, a multi-disciplinary research strand within the Centre for Geopolitics at Cambridge University, provided students, policymakers and the general public with credible and engaging insights aimed at shaping new scholarship, sound policy and constructive debate on the role of faith in global affairs.

In the area of diplomacy, CIRIS contributed substantially to the increased government attention to religion by serving as the secretariat for the Transatlantic Policy Network on Religion and Diplomacy (TPNRD) and as creators and managers of the Religion & Diplomacy website. CIRIS also engaged a wide scholarly and popular audience through its numerous events and publications.

The TPNRD fosters collaboration on religion-related foreign policy issues among senior diplomats, with participants representing 16 countries and two multilateral bodies: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, the European External Action Service, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, United Nations and the United States. TPNRD is now based in the United States.