On an unusually hot afternoon in London, Professor Alexis Roig (pictured) steps into the neoclassical halls of 10–11 Carlton House Terrace, home to the British Academy. He is invited by the UK Young Academy to join a high-level dialogue on science and technology diplomacy, convened with the Royal Society, the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Irish Academy, and the Learned Society of Wales. The event brings together leading and emerging voices to explore how science can inform diplomacy in a divided and fast-changing world.
Amongst the experts sharing the stage with Roig are Susie Kitchens, a British diplomat currently seconded to Imperial College London, and Patrick Nédellec, Counsellor for Science and Technology at the French Embassy in London. Their presence lends the dialogue both diplomatic weight and a distinct UK–EU resonance.
Roig brings to the room a quiet urgency, shaped by war, disinformation and a fraying multilateral order. As one of the most prominent global advocates for science diplomacy, he sees knowledge not simply as power but as common ground: one of the last neutral spaces still capable of bridging political divides. Alexis Roig is an associate researcher at the United Nations University (UNU-CRIS) and the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB), and Professor of Science Diplomacy at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) and the Barcelona Institute of International Studies (IBEI). He also serves as CEO of SciTech DiploHub, a leading international platform at the intersection of science and foreign policy. He helps shape the global science diplomacy agenda, advising governments, multilateral institutions and cities on how to embed scientific expertise into international decision-making.
Just hours before departing for the United Nations Financing for Development Summit in Seville, we sit down to discuss the rise of cities as diplomatic actors, the need to train a new generation of science diplomats, and why, in Roig’s view, science is not just a strategic asset but a form of power reshaping Europe’s role in global affairs.
Professor Roig, after years of uncertainty post-Brexit, the UK has rejoined Horizon Europe and a new broader UK–EU Strategic Partnership has been recently announced. How would you characterize the significance of this move?
It is not simply a matter of budget or participation. The UK’s return to Horizon Europe marks the end of a strategic ambiguity that had left researchers on both sides in limbo. What we are witnessing is a renewed act of trust, not only in institutions but in the very notion that science is a shared European project.
UK researchers were awarded nearly £500 million in grants in 2024, placing Britain amongst the top non-EU beneficiaries both in volume and prestige, with nearly 3,000 grants spanning neurosurgical sensors, sustainable aviation fuel and more. Horizon Europe’s 2025 Work Programme expands access for UK scientists into high-sensitivity domains, from quantum to robotics, AI and space, reopening a door that had been slammed shut during the Brexit standoff.
This reconnection permits continuity in major cross-border projects and helps British institutions regain the convenor role they once held. More profoundly, it demonstrates that Europe can remain strategic and cohesive even amidst geopolitical fragmentation.
It also aligns with the broader UK–EU Strategic Partnership announced in May, which covers security, defence, maritime cooperation and health policy. This renewed diplomatic framework places science and technology diplomacy at the heart of international trust-building.
How does this partnership contend with dual-use concerns amidst the rising strategic importance of emerging technologies? Can the UK–EU axis provide coherence amongst the tangled allegiances between the US, China and others?
The UK occupies a perpetual superposition, if you allow me, a kind of British “quantum state” of being both inside and outside the EU, aligned yet sovereign. Nearly 46 per cent of its trade remains with the bloc, binding its regulations and technical standards to Brussels anyway.
In parallel, partnerships like AUKUS align the UK with the US and Australia in quantum and defence, while the EU seeks strategic autonomy. The UK is hosting NATO’s DIANA accelerator, supporting dual-use start-ups in quantum, undersea sensing and autonomy. The country also launched its AI Safety Institute, aligned internationally since last year, yet declined to co-sign the EU’s Paris AI declaration, favouring national over supranational control.
All of this unfolds against the backdrop of the EU AI Act, coming into effect next month, which sets new global standards for general-purpose AI. These parallel yet distinct tracks raise questions about convergence and strategic autonomy. If the UK and EU co-lead on dual-use standards, quantum governance and AI safety, they can both shape global norms.
You have spoken today about youth mobility. Does the UK’s rejoining of Erasmus+ represent a further thaw in cooperation?
At the Lancaster House summit in May, leaders adopted a shared vision to repair people-to-people ties. The EU has formally invited the UK to rejoin Erasmus+, and while London proposes a time-limited youth experience scheme, full reintegration remains under negotiation.
Erasmus+ is more than student exchange: it is Europe’s cultural and higher education soft power engine. Its return would signal not just mobility, but trust across generations, a promise of shared identity and intellectual openness.
In some articles you described science diplomacy as “Europe’s soft power muscle”. However, today you suggested that it is subtly entering the realm of hard power. Could you elaborate on this evolution? What factors are driving this shift, and what implications might it have for Europe’s global role?
Traditional diplomacy remains entangled in politics; science offers a form of quiet resonance. Laboratories collaborate. Scientists, unlike diplomats, engage through methods, not messages. Horizon Europe is an infrastructure of trust: a scaffolding of legal alignment, funding and shared norms that enables science to transcend borders.
Scientists do not require visa waivers to trust each other. That trust is already embedded in the method, in the pursuit of truth. When Europe stands between Washington and Beijing in areas such as quantum governance or green tech standards, unity counts far more than any trade concession. Fragmentation is the enemy of influence.
Critics in the UK describe a pushmi-pullyu approach: generous R&D pledges but cuts to global health and restrictive immigration. How sustainable is that policy?
It is contradictory, but we are seeing this in other countries. The UK has committed more than £80 billion over four years, with growth targets to £22 billion annually by 2029–30, plus significant funding for nuclear, quantum and green technologies, as part of the government’s Plan for Change.
Yet this ambition coexists with cuts to health research, aid budgets and tight immigration restrictions. No nation can claim scientific sovereignty while building walls against the minds that fuel innovation. Sovereign control versus epistemic openness, that tension is at the heart of modern science diplomacy.
Science diplomacy must operate precisely where sovereign control and epistemic openness collide.
You were one of the main experts selected by the European Commission to shape the new European Framework for Science Diplomacy unveiled this year. Will it make a tangible difference?
I was amongst the group of global experts who contributed to the formulation of this new EU Framework, alongside colleagues from across disciplines, sectors and member states. It is always challenging to bring together diverse perspectives, different branches of knowledge, national contexts and multiple levels of governance. All in all, I think it marks a watershed: the first document to define science diplomacy at the EU level not just as policy, but as a set of values: ethical, inclusive and globally strategic. Still, frameworks only matter when institutions act. We will see how this one is put into practice, but I believe it sets us in the right direction.
The Framework outlines nine recommendations, organized into strategic, operational and enabling instruments. It calls for deeper integration of science into EU external action, including scientific advice within diplomatic missions, support for open science and academic freedom, and stronger alignment between research and foreign policy. It also places strong emphasis on capacity-building through fellowships, secondments, training programmes and platforms that connect researchers, policymakers and partners across regions, particularly in the Global South. If implemented seriously, it could help embed science diplomacy as a lasting capability within the EU’s external relations.
You insisted today on how science diplomacy relies on trust in both science and institutions. Are we underestimating how misinformation and politicisation affect that trust?
Deeply. We often tend to imagine science diplomacy as something negotiated between ministers and researchers. But increasingly, its real battlefield is discursive: shaped by headlines, algorithms and attention cycles. When science and diplomacy are politicised, and truth becomes tribal, collaboration erodes.
As the Royal Society and AAAS warned in their joint report earlier this year, attacks on scientific integrity are no longer anecdotal, they are systemic. Building resilient science diplomacy means actively protecting the credibility of evidence and the people and institutions that produce it.
We are seeing this unfold in the last few years. Scientific advice is filtered through ideological lenses. Research budgets become political chess pieces. Diplomatic nuance gets reduced to clickbait. And organised disinformation, often driven by partisan interests, actively undermines trust in science and scientific institutions, particularly on issues like climate, global health, AI or international collaboration.
Diplomacy requires long-term vision. But many governments are now hostage to media rhythms. And science, which thrives on slowness and uncertainty, struggles to survive in binary or populist narratives. What is eroding is not just policy coherence, but epistemic sovereignty. When societies can no longer distinguish evidence-based information from politically crafted opinion, the foundation of trust disintegrates.
We need a new alliance of scientists, diplomats, citizens and independent journalists, united by shared principles of verification, neutrality and evidence. Not to control narratives, but to defend the conditions under which truth remains possible.
You are widely recognised for your work on the role of cities and non-state actors in science diplomacy. How do you see their influence evolving in this geopolitical moment?
A central one. The classical architecture of diplomacy, built on embassies, treaties and sovereign flags, no longer maps fully onto where international cooperation is governed, funded or deployed. Cities, but also universities, foundations, tech hubs and big corporations, are not only participating in diplomacy, they are often leading it. Science diplomacy is only meaningful when driven by this diversity of actors, not just by top-down government agendas.
Cities like Barcelona, Boston or Mexico City have become platforms for science diplomacy in their own right: forging partnerships, hosting international talent, setting climate and data standards. They are agile, trusted and increasingly strategic. This matters because many global challenges, from public health to digital ethics, are managed locally but negotiated globally. National governments may stall, but cities continue to act.
Science diplomacy must now embrace a true recognition that legitimacy and influence no longer flow exclusively through nation-states. The success of future science diplomacy will depend on how well we integrate these new players into the global governance fabric.
You recently participated in a series of high-level forums: UNESCO’s Global Ministerial Dialogue on Science Diplomacy, the Tech Diplomacy Forum, the International Science Council’s General Assembly in Muscat, and the UN Ocean Conference. These are rare spaces where diplomats, researchers and global decision-makers converge. How did these back-to-back gatherings shape your sense of where science diplomacy is headed?
What stood out was the convergence of urgency and ambition. In all these events, you could feel that science and technology diplomacy is no longer viewed as an accessory to foreign policy, it is becoming infrastructure. Whether the discussion focused on peacebuilding, frontier technologies, blue economy or digital sovereignty, there was a shared understanding: we cannot govern complexity without credible, science-informed cooperation.
What makes me feel prouder is how diverse an audience we are managing to gather in these summits: ministers from the Global South, city representatives, tech entrepreneurs, academic voices; all contributing to a vision of diplomacy that goes beyond protocol and embraces practical solutions. That kind of multilateralism does not emerge from theory; it requires constant construction.
My role in these global summits is primarily that of a facilitator: listening, sharing perspectives, and helping connect ideas across disciplines and regions. More importantly, the experience reaffirmed a core belief, science diplomacy is only as strong as the ecosystem that supports it. Summits like these matter not just for visibility, but also to build the long-term coalitions of trust on which science diplomacy depends. They create space for what I think of as curated serendipity, where unexpected and catalytic exchanges can lead to lasting collaborations.
After London, you are flying directly to Seville for the United Nations’ Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4). How does this next stop connect with your work in science diplomacy?
The shift from London to Seville reflects something deeper. Diplomacy today sits at the intersection of governance, finance and knowledge. FfD4 will bring together heads of state, finance ministers, development banks, UN agencies and civil society to rethink how we mobilise resources for the SDGs in a fragmented and fiscally constrained global context.
From what I have seen in the preparatory process, science and technology are expected to take on a more central role than in previous editions, not only as tools for innovation, but as frameworks for accountability, cooperation and inclusion. There is clear momentum around digital public infrastructure, metrics that move beyond GDP, and new ways to recognise South–South contributions through data and technical capacity. I am particularly encouraged by the efforts of UNCTAD and other UN bodies to bring scientific rigour and evidence-informed tools into financial policy debates.
The striking insight is that science diplomacy is no longer peripheral, it has become policy infrastructure. I will be there to help connect actors across regions and sectors, and to ensure that this perspective is part of how priorities are shaped. Development financing needs more than capital. It requires systems that are science-literate, data-driven and globally collaborative.
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