Dr Robin Wilson is a long-time expert adviser to the Council of Europe on intercultural integration. He was one of the main drafters of the White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue, launched in 2008. The white paper signalled the Intercultural Cities programme to trial the new intercultural paradigm via municipalities on the ground and he became an adviser to the programme, assisting several member cities in developing bespoke intercultural strategies, evaluating the programme as a whole for its director five years on in 2013 and writing policy briefs.
He subsequently made the case for the development of a model framework for intercultural strategies at the national level, of which he was one of the main drafters, endorsed by the Committee of Ministers in 2022. He was commissioned to translate this framework into the various multi-level governance arrangements of differently constituted member states, in the context of a project on Cyprus, subsequently co-authoring its application to Finland.
He distilled his accumulated experience in working with the Council of Europe on intercultural integration into a monograph, Meeting the Challenge of Cultural Diversity in Europe: Moving Beyond the Crisis (Edward Elgar). He has a particular interest in how sport can be a vehicle for interculturalism, having worked extensively with the two football associations in Ireland (and with Football Against Racism in Europe) and individual clubs on how football in particular can bring people together across ethnic dividing lines.
