Introduction

The Jan Masaryk Centre for International Studies, founded in 1991, is the oldest academic institution in the Czech Republic teaching and conducting research on international politics and diplomacy.  In 2021, it has been transformed into a research centre within the Faculty of International Relations of Prague University of Economics and Business. Its aim is to promote high-level collaborative research in international affairs among the members of the faculty across fields and disciplines, including also cooperation with scholars from other domestic and foreign institutions. Originating with a focus on international politics and diplomacy, the mission of the centre is to encourage team members and colleagues to combine their interests and expertise to generate synergistic research outputs. The goal is to produce research papers of sufficient quality to be published in leading journals, as well as monographs published by leading international academic publishing houses.