Ben O’Loughlin was a speaker at the international conference L’Influence et Ses Limites in Paris on June 20-21 2019. The conference was held at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), the School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. Ben spoke about the concept of soft power and why he and his co-authors prefer to analyse influence in International Relations through the concept of strategic narrative (see their 2014 paper setting out the original argument here). In this interdisciplinary discussion, many of the participants were eager to consider how they could use strategic narrative analysis for historical research, as well as identify narratives in digital environments.

Thank you to Yves Cohen for organising the conference.