Every year, students in COMS420 “Public Diplomacy” course (coordinator: Professor Natalia Chaban) work in small group to design public diplomacy campaigns for different embassies posted to New Zealand. In 2015, the Embassy of Germany to New Zealand invited our students to design a sports diplomacy campaign. A team of diplomatic jurors selected a winning team: Amanda Gostomski, Craig Petersen, Jacob Laudenslager and Samantha Ferrier (all MIRAD students), who designed an original public diplomacy campaign for the Crankworx event — the world’s biggest mountain bike festival hosted in Christchurch in 2026. The German diplomas recognised the high quality and creative ideas that informed students’ project and they employed the winning team this year to attend the event and contribute to the event’s social media campaign working in collaboration with the German diplomats. The team – Amanda, Sam and Jacob – have just wrapped up covering the Crankworx event that has brought the best riders from around the globe (the image is designed by Samantha Ferrier, a member of the UC Public Diplomacy team, for the event’s social media campaign).
Students of Public Diplomacy Collaborate with the Embassy of Germany to New Zealand at the Crankworx 2026
