Editorial introduction to Mays C, Laborie L, Griset P (eds) Inventing a shared science diplomacy for Europe: Interdisciplinary case studies to think with history. The InsSciDE collection of historical case studies invites us to entertain, if not an alternative diplomacy that can be immediately set in motion, certainly an alternative view on science diplomacy. Beyond the canon of “diplomacy for science”, and “science for or in diplomacy”, beyond the practitioners’ insistence on the operative uses of diplomacy and science, InsSciDE research communicates in this volume a new contribution to the field: a living, moving, endlessly complex and compelling image of historical reality in all its dimensions and contradictions. InsSciDE authors together offer us a mirror in which we may glimpse not only a recognizable image of human desire, but also a deep perspective on how cooperation and competition form, against the odds and beyond prediction, our technoscientific achievement and our international relations.

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