Oxford University Diplomatic Studies Programme

Building on a long history of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge being linked to the British civil service, in 1926 they jointly created a Tropical African Services Course on behalf of the British Colonial Office. This programme continued in varying forms and under different names for another forty-three years, as the Colonial Administrative Service Course (1934), the Devonshire Course (1945), Course 'A' and 'B' (1953), the Overseas Service Course (1962) and, finally, the Overseas Course in Government and Development (1964). As many Commonwealth states gained independence, their governments sought trained diplomats to staff their Foreign Services. In response to this need, in the 1960s, the Overseas Course was adapted to allow for a small Foreign Service component, morphing, in 1964, into a coherent and more integrated Foreign Service Training Course under the auspices of the Overseas Service Course. Examinations were instituted in 1966. When the Overseas Service Course was discontinued in 1969, the Foreign Service element of that course was transformed into the Foreign Service Programme, based out of Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford. In the decades that followed, the programme expanded its audience to governments in the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia. After the Fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the Foreign and Commonwealth and Office requested places be made available to newly independent former Soviet countries, to help to build their diplomatic capacity. In 2010, the programme moved to the Department for Continuing Education at Oxford, and in 2017 it changed its name to the Diplomatic Studies Programme, reflecting the more common terminology in the modern academic field. ==Notable alumni==