Margaret Eastman Smith grew up in North America, Asia, and Europe.  She has American and British citizenship. She attended university in the United States and currently writes for the website We Are One Humanity (www.weareonehumanity.org).

Between 1999 and 2017, as a faculty member of the Program on International Peace and Conflict Resolution at American University in Washington, DC, Margaret taught courses aimed at helping students confront difference and assist in building a more resilient society in places of deep social division.

Her doctoral research focused on social memory: she studied the ways historical ideas reinforce social divisions but can also be used to mitigate conflict, particularly with reference to Northern Ireland.  The research issued in Reckoning with the Past: Teaching History in Northern Ireland (Lexington Books, 2005). Her Ph.D. is from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, at Tufts University.

She has participated in, and written about, a number of projects addressing the role of social memory in rigidifying the boundaries of divided societies and in undergirding democratic ideas. Her areas of teaching included nationalist and ethnic conflict, uses of memory in politics, and post-conflict reconstruction in deeply divided societies.

Earlier, with the international program of Initiatives of Change, Margaret spent four years in Papua New Guinea helping women make adjustments in their lives necessitated by changes connected with that country’s independence from Australia. She spent a further four years in Richmond, Virginia working on projects to improve community relations.

Before gaining her doctorate, Margaret earned an MA in History from Boston University, and she has a second MA, in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, from Lesley University.