Nested Northern Europe: How Practitioners Construct Arctic and Baltic Spaces of Science Diplomacy in Iceland, Sweden and Denmark

This paper examines how science diplomacy practitioners in Iceland, Sweden and Denmark construct ‘Northern Europe’ as a set of nested regional spaces for knowledge governance and foreign policy action. It treats the ‘Arctic’, ‘Baltic’ and ‘Nordic’ not as fixed geographies but as discursive categories whose meanings are produced, contested and stabilised through policy discourse and practice. Drawing on post-structuralist insights on power/knowledge and hegemonic discourse, it asks how practitioners narrate the relative salience, functions and boundaries of Arctic and Baltic engagement within what they understand as science diplomacy. Empirically, the study analyses semi-structured interviews conducted for the Polish National Science Centre NCN OPUS 22 project ‘Science diplomacy in Northern Europe’ (2021/43/B/HS5/01638), with practitioners across ministries and public agencies, research-funding bodies, universities, and hybrid intermediaries such as foundations. Using discourse-oriented thematic coding, it traces (1) boundary work around what counts as ‘science diplomacy’ (including ‘implicit’ practices that are rarely labelled as such), and (2) region-specific framings of problems, partners and policy instruments. Three findings stand out. First, respondents commonly articulate a nested ordering in which ‘Nordic’ cooperation functions as the default platform. Baltic engagement is often framed as an extension of Nordic frameworks rather than as a distinct space for science diplomacy, except in settings where the Baltic becomes an explicit strategic priority. Second, the Arctic is consistently portrayed as a high-salience strategic space in which scientific excellence and expertise serve as diplomatic capital, enabling legitimacy, presence and influence in regional governance, particularly for a small state like Iceland. Third, practitioners describe a shift since 2022 in which heightened international tensions have securitised both Arctic and Baltic cooperation, reframed ‘legitimate’ partnerships towards like-minded agents, and made access to knowledge (including data) an explicit political concern. The paper analyses how practitioner narratives help stabilise a hegemonic ‘common sense’ about Northern Europe that privileges particular spaces and instruments while rendering others less visible as science diplomacy. It contributes to the Knowledge Politics and Policies agenda by demonstrating how regional order in Northern Europe is reproduced through everyday foreign policy discourse and the governance of knowledge across nested regional spaces.