The Diplomatic Academy was part of the

Foreign and Commonwealth Office The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) is a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, department of the Government of the United Kingdom. Equivalent to other countries' Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ministries of fore ...

(FCO) of the United Kingdom. It was renamed the International Academy following the merger of the FCO and the

Department for International Development , type = Department , logo = DfID.svg , logo_width = 180px , logo_caption = , picture = File:Admiralty Screen (411824276).jpg , picture_width = 180px , picture_caption = Department for International Development (London office) (far right ...

(DFID) in September 2020 to form the new Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). The creation of a new Diplomatic Academy was announced in a speech by

William Hague William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...

, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, on 19 September 2013 on the occasion of the opening of the FCO's new Language Centre. The Academy began operating in 2014 and was opened officially by Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond on 10 February 2015. The Academy was a Directorate of the FCO. The first Director of the Academy (2014–17) was Jon Davies. His successor as Director (2017-20) was Jon Benjamin. The Academy was originally structured into 11 thematic areas, or "Faculties": These were: International Policy, Diplomatic Practice, States and Societies, Understanding the UK, Consular and Crisis Management, Economics and Prosperity, Europe, Multilateral, Security Defence and Intelligence, Law, and Languages. A twelfth Faculty - Trade Policy and Negotiations - was added in 2016 after the UK vote to leave the European Union. In 2017 the Academy absorbed further internal responsibilities for management and leadership training and for the FCO's overseas network of Regional Learning & Development Teams, which became the Diplomatic Academy Regional Teams (DARTs). The Diplomatic Academy became the principal learning and development (L&D) organisation of the FCO. The administrative offices and training rooms of what is now the International Academy are located in the main building of the FCDO in King Charles Street, London. A new learning facility named the Mayhew Theatre (after Baroness

Cicely Mayhew Cicely Elizabeth Mayhew, Baroness Mayhew (''née'' Ludlam; 16 February 1924 – 8 July 2016) was a British diplomat. She was the second woman to work for the British Foreign Office, and its first female diplomat. Early life She was born on 16 Fe ...

, the UK's first woman diplomat) was officially opened on 4 March 2019 by

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge William, Prince of Wales, (William Arthur Philip Louis; born 21 June 1982) is the heir apparent to the British throne. He is the elder son of King Charles III and his first wife Diana, Princess of Wales. Born in London, William was educat ...

. The theatre was given this name following a vote of FCO staff. The Academy's face-to-face and online programmes are aimed at FCDO employees and employees of other UK government departments and agencies who are working in international roles. It does not offer external enrolment on face-to-face courses, but it has experimented with the concept of the

Massive Open Online Course A massive open online course (MOOC ) or an open online course is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the Web. In addition to traditional course materials, such as filmed lectures, readings, and problem sets, m ...

and has released two public courses. The first, entitled ''Diplomacy in the 21st Century,'' was developed with the

Open University The Open University (OU) is a British public research university and the largest university in the United Kingdom by number of students. The majority of the OU's undergraduate students are based in the United Kingdom and principally study off- ...

and ran on the

FutureLearn FutureLearn is a British digital education platform founded in December 2012. The company is jointly owned by The Open University and SEEK Ltd. It is a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)ExpertTrack microcredential and Degree learning platform ...

platform in January–March and May-July 2019 with over 13,500 registrations in total. A second course entitled ''Introduction to British Diplomacy'' ran in February and May 2020.

References

{{reflist 2014 establishments in the United Kingdom Diplomatic training Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office