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Podcast: New Books in Western European Studies
Episode: Bram de Maeyer, "Building for Belgium: Belgian Embassies in a Globalising World (1945-2020)" (Leuven UP, 2025)
Description: Embassy buildings are the most tangible evidence of a state’s diplomatic presence abroad. State authorities have invested in the architectural conception of purpose-built embassies to flex their diplomatic muscle and project nationhood on foreign soil. While scholars have primarily focused on purpose-built embassies of (former) world powers, Building for Belgium: Belgian Embassies in a Globalising World (1945-2020) (Leuven UP, 2025) by Dr. Bram de Maeyer shifts the perspective by scrutinising the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ embassy-building programme from 1945 to 2020.
Rather than a conventional political assessment of diplomatic relations, the book foregrounds the often-overlooked architectural lives of embass...