Office: Sports Annex 112B
Office Hours: By Appointment Only
Office: (202) 885-1564

E-mail: mesmith@american.edu

M.A./PhD. Tufts University
B.A./M.A. Boston University



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Biography
Margaret Smith is a Scholar in Residence at the School of International Service, American University. From 1999-2007 she was the Director of American University's Washington Semester Program in Peace and Conflict Resolution.  Professor Smith has come to Washington, DC and American University from Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she was for five years as an associate of the Program on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution at Harvard and adjunct Professor of Conflict Resolution at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts.  Her doctoral research, which she did in Northern Ireland, was on the role of historical memory in ethno-national conflicts, and addressed the question whether revised history teaching can contribute to conflict resolution processes.
 
Before completing her PhD she worked for the conflict resolution organization Initiatives of Change in the U.S. and Europe, as well as Papua, New Guinea and Australia.  She has taught history, political science and conflict resolution at the college level.  Her academic interests include theories of nationalism and ethnicity, historical memory and ethno-nationalism, the conflicts of Northern Ireland and the West Balkans, comparative ethnic conflict, human rights and international organizations.

Research Interest:

• Nationalism and ethnonational conflict
  
• Historical memory and History Teaching in relation to ethnonational conflict
  
• Post-Conflict reconstruction
  

Recent Courses Taught

• Differences/Similarities in Conflict Resolution
• Peace Paradigms
  
• Post Conflict Reconstruction in the West Balkans
• Post Conflict Reconstruction in Northern Ireland
• U.S. Foreign Policy
  
• Research in Peace and Conflict Resolution

Selected Publications

• "Education and Post-conflict Recovery," in Barry Hart,ed., Peacebuilding in Traumatized Societies, Lanham,Md.:University Press
  
• Contributing author to a history of the wars of the 1990s in former Yugoslavia, produced by the Scholars’ Initiative (Forthcoming)
  
• Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books. Reckoning with the Past: Teaching History in Northern Ireland. (January 2005)
• Book Review of People, Peace and Power by Diana Francis  in Peace Review 15, 2 (June 2003)
• Book Review of Between Eden to Armageddon: The Future of World Religions, Violence and Peacemaking  by Marc Gopin  in Peace Review 13, 4 (December 2001)

Professional Practice (Selected)

PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS 

• International Society for Political Psychology
  
• International Studies Association

FACILITATION

• Facilitator for the “National Interfaith Dialogue Gathering,” organized by Communities Working Together, Washington, D.C.
• Developed a training session for The World Sindhi Institute on the basics of conflict resolution
• Pro bono facilitation for Initiatives of Change, Inc., addressing internal conflict and changes of governance structures, working closely with Executive Director and Chairman of the Board.
• With others at the Program on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution at Harvard, organized role plays for the Fellows at the Center for International Affairs, to give instruction in the methodology of Interactive Problem Solving.

MANAGEMENT

• Academic Director for Peace and Conflict Resolution, Washington Semester Program, American University.  Organizing three-week overseas trips for students twice a year to study post-conflict reconstruction in Northern Ireland, the Balkans and Israel-Palestine.
• Program Coordinator, Initiatives of Change, Inc. Devised and implemented activities for women in Papua New Guinea to help them deal with the social changes in the transition to independence.
• Conference coordinator, Initiatives of Change, Inc., organizing seminars to promote cooperation in the areas of family, race and community, industrial and international relations in the U.S., England, France, Switzerland, Australia and India 
  

Awards

• Annual research grant to associates at the Program on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution, Harvard University from the Hewlett Foundation.
• Research Grant, British Council, Belfast, Northern Ireland.
• Research Grant from the William Donner Foundation’s grant to the Security Studies Program at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy