Dr. Charlotte Rottiers

The research project Staging Diplomacy: Belgian Diplomatic Interiors on Display in Le Soir Illustré, 1930s analyses the staging and mediatisation of diplomatic architecture and interiors in print media. The subject is the remarkable series depicting visits to twelve Belgian embassies and legations across Europe, published in the 1903s in Le Soir Illustré, a Belgian illustrated weekend newspaper insert. The project aims to focus on these diplomatic interiors to shift the attention away from purpose-built architectural projects as the materialisation of foreign policy and national identity. To do so, it takes the interior spaces of diplomacy as a lens to uncover and evaluate the users, diplomatic practices and strategies of (self-) representation described therein. The texts and photographs of these articles capture the moment when Belgian diplomats embraced the rise of mass media as an instrument of representation and self-othering (Auwers 2012). They give insight into diplomatic interiors as the material expression of transnational diplomatic culture and the persistence of aristocratic culture as tools of representation. A critical reading of the objects, art and furniture on display, the semi-public or private character of spaces shown, the interaction and posing of the diplomat within these spaces, and recurring settings throughout the photographed facilitates an understanding of how interiors were used as stages to perform diplomatic identities. At the same time, this project also problematises what remains out of sight, including capital cities and nations othered as the Orient, and hidden actors and labour such as service personnel, and local and female actors.

Bio: Charlotte Rottiers is an architectural historian and Swiss Government Excellence Scholar. Her interests lie in architectural history, cultural and political representation, identity formation through art and architecture, and transnational mobility networks. She was trained in Art History, Urban Planning, and East European Languages and Cultures. In 2024, she obtained her PhD at KU Leuven, Faculty of Architecture with the manuscript Housing the Nation Abroad: The Material Representation of Belgian Diplomacy, 1831-1914. She continues her research on material representation and diplomatic culture by investigating the staging and mediatisation of diplomatic architecture and interiors in print media in the interwar period.