In 2025 you attended the World Diplomacy Championships in San Francisco and then the European Diplomacy Championships in Leiden, which you subsequently won. Could you explain to us how you discovered these events and what drew you to participate?

Diplomacy is a strategy game that relies heavily on negotiation and social skills in order to achieve victory. I started playing some years ago with a few people in my debate club while an undergraduate student at the University of Ottawa. I got instantly hooked to the game and learned that there were tournaments across North America, Europe, and Australia where people from around the world gather to compete against each other. What drew me to participate was the intensity of the game (games can often go on for several hours and emotions run high) and that tournaments can attract very intelligent and interesting players (for example, Demis Hassabis, who subsequently won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, was at the first tournament I attended). 

Has participating in external events, such as this one, allowed you to gain another perspective to diplomacy, alongside your studies at the Institute?

Participating in Diplomacy events has expanded my capacity to communicate and negotiate with a variety of people in an environment that feels very high stakes. This semester, I enrolled in Professor Achim Wennmann’s “Mediation in Conflict Resolution and Political Transitions” course alongside the Peacebuilding Initiative’s “Mastering Mediation” seminars and I realised that the skills I have honed and developed through my time playing Diplomacy are directly applicable to the skills needed of a peace mediator or negotiator. These include knowing how to convince people to make concessions, reading and understanding people’s feelings and motivations and pushing for solutions where there may not seem to be any.

As a winner of the championship, will you aim to participate again and what do you hope to do differently or similarly?

Absolutely, there is a lot of reward from continuing to compete and participate in Diplomacy events and there is always room to win more. In 2022, I won the North American Championships which were hosted in California and I aim to compete in the 2026 World Diplomacy Championships in Athens in hopes that I can also obtain the title of World Champion. 

With Diplomacy, it is hard to anticipate how the tournaments will play out because it depends heavily on the people you have to negotiate and play with. Depending on who I am next to, I will use different tactics and adjust my negotiation skills and thus it is hard to know what to do differently ahead of time. Being flexible and adaptable in the moment are key skills for any player who wishes to succeed at the events.