Dan Smith is the Secretary General of International Alert and Chairman of the UN Peacebuilding Fund’s Advisory Group. He started research on issues of peace and conflict in the 1970s and was the co-author of The War Atlas with Michael Kidron in 1983, an early predecessor of what came to be Myriad’s State of… series.
Dan is a prolific author with a publications list including over 100 articles and chapters in scholarly journals as well as books, including successive editions of The State of the World Atlas and The State of the Middle East. Among writings for a specialist readership, he was the author in 2003 of the overview report of the Joint Utstein Study of Peacebuilding – Towards a Strategic Framework for Peacebuilding – and co-authored the pioneering report A Climate of Conflict on the links between climate change, peace and war.
Dan’s previous positions include Director of the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (1993-2001) and Director of the Transnational Institute, Amsterdam (1991-3). Fellowships include the Norwegian Nobel Institute (2001) and the Hellenic Foundation for Foreign and European Policy (2003). Honorary positions include Chairman of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting (1992-2006). He was awarded the OBE in 2002.
