The School of International Relations and Diplomacy (SIRD) traces its origins to the Diplomacy program, established in 1999 at Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU), long known as the "cradle of diplomats". As the university's earliest interdisciplinary major, the Department of Diplomacy initially merged with the English Department to form the School of English Studies to promote complementary strengths and interdisciplinary integration. In September 2006, the Department of Diplomacy merged with the Institute of International Studies, officially giving rise to the School of International Relations and Diplomacy. 

The school consists of the Department of Diplomacy, the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, and the editorial office of International Forum, an academic journal. It offers a master's degree program in Political Science and a doctoral program in International Relations and Area Studies. The school currently enrolls undergraduate students in three majors: Diplomacy, International Organizations and Global Governance, and a Sino-foreign joint program in Diplomacy. 

SIRD has developed a talent cultivation model characterized by interdisciplinary knowledge, multilingual capabilities, and global vision. The school currently has 622 Chinese students (441 undergraduates, 138 master's students and 43 doctoral students). Additionally, it hosts 45 international students (22 undergraduates, 19 master's or doctoral students and 4 in exchange programs) hailing from countries such as South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Russia, the United Kingdom and Spain. 

The school has 35 faculty and staff members, including 12 professors and researchers, and 6 associate professors or associate researchers. Many faculty members have been selected for prestigious talent programs. Over the past five years, the faculty members have published 586 academic papers in major domestic and international journals, including 167 high-quality representative papers, authored 17 monographs, and led 14 National Social Science Fund projects—2 key projects and 3 major ones among them. They have also received 13 significant awards at the national, ministerial, and professional-society levels. 

Leveraging BFSU's unique strength of offering courses in 101 foreign languages, SIRD relies on the university's 41 Ministry of Education-approved centers and incubators for country and area studies to build a robust academic platform. The school emphasizes language proficiency and academic research, balancing international relations with area and country studies, and major power studies with research on developing countries. It has developed distinct research teams in five key areas, US politics and diplomacy, EU politics and diplomacy, China's international discourse power, global governance, and political thought, earning a strong reputation in China's academic community.