Keynote at CED-2026: Computational Diplomacy, How Computation and Diplomacy Make Each Other
On 29 October 2026, Roland Bouffanais delivered a keynote at CED-2026, the Annual International Scientific Conference “Economic Development and Legacy by Simon Kuznets”, hosted by Simon Kuznets Kharkiv National University of Economics (KhNEU) in Kharkiv, Ukraine, in hybrid format. Dedicated to the 1971 Nobel laureate in Economics, this year’s edition took the form of a roundtable, “A Rebooting World: Sustainability, Innovation, and New Development Trajectories”, bringing together economists and representatives of academic, governmental and private institutions around four themes: the opportunity economy and new growth models; universities of the future; 21st-century social landscapes; and digital worlds and smart technologies.
Roland’s plenary talk, “Computational Diplomacy: How Computation and Diplomacy Make Each Other”, presented the research program of the Chair in Computational Diplomacy and the Science in Diplomacy Lab (SiDLab): how data science, network analysis and AI can help us understand and support multilateral negotiations and international cooperation, and, conversely, how the practice of diplomacy raises questions that reshape computational methods themselves. He joined a line-up of keynote speakers that included Beata Javorcik (Chief Economist, EBRD), Howard J. Shatz (RAND), Volodymyr Ponomarenko (KhNEU) and Mark J. Brandt (Tilburg University).
Holding an international scientific conference in Kharkiv under the present circumstances is a remarkable achievement, and we thank the Organizing Committee and Rector Tatyana Shtal for the invitation and for their unwavering commitment to academic life and international exchange.
