The 2020s will likely be remembered for a wide array of global challenges and opportunities related to rapid and transformational technology development. Among those major transformations has been the emergence of a wide array of space technologies, open to a wider number of international actors than any time in human history. This commercial space revolution has evolved concurrent to a resurgence of great power competition and geopolitical rivalries, meaning that the era of urgent, anticipatory space diplomacy must get under way as well.
Questions abound: will the Russian Federation become the world’s first “former space power”? What should the form of cooperation or competition between the space programs run by Washington and Beijing be? How will emerging space technologies transform the way that international diplomacy and sanctions enforcement are conducted going forward? How can international organizations better address the urgent need for norms and regulations between government and private sector actors operating spacecraft in low earth orbit and beyond? Will the world be able to avoid a future weaponization of outer space, instead ensuring a safe and sustainable future off planet?
To address these questions and more, the Duke University Space Diplomacy Lab welcomed Dr. Mai’a K. Davis Cross, the Dean’s Professor of Political Science, International Affairs, and Diplomacy, and Director of the Center for International Affairs and World Cultures at Northeastern University.
Read the Duke Today article on this event here.
Dr. Cross has written extensively on European and transatlantic relations in the area of space policy. She is author or editor of six books, including: International Cooperation Against All Odds: The Ultrasocial World (Oxford University Press, Fall 2023), The Politics of Crisis in Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and Security Integration in Europe: How Knowledge-based Networks are Transforming the European Union (University of Michigan Press, 2011), the 2012 winner of the Best Book Prize from the University Association of Contemporary European Studies. In May 2023, she published a special issue of the Hague Journal of Diplomacy, focused on Space Diplomacy. Dr. Cross holds a PhD in Politics from Princeton University, and a bachelor’s degree in Government from Harvard University. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
