Dan Smith, former director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), is an independent consultant, based in Sweden. His career encompasses both scholarship and practice on peacebuilding and security issues over a period of five decades. He was director of SIPRI from 2015 to 2025, and before that was secretary general of the London-based peacebuilding organization International Alert (2003–2015), and director of the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (1993-2001). He chaired the UN Peacebuilding Fund Advisory Group (2010–11) and was Professor of Peace & Conflict at the University of Manchester (2014-2017).

Dan Smith’s authored works cover a wide range of issues. They include five editions of The State of the World Atlas from 1999 to 2020, four editions of The State of War and Peace Atlas from 1983 to 2003, and three editions of The State of the Middle East Atlas from 2006 to 2015. Recent policy reports include Five urgent questions on ecological security (2023, co-authored with Rod Schoonover) and Elements of a Planetary Emergency (2022, lead author).

His current interests focus on mediation, ecological security, the crisis in the world order, and regional security politics in the Middle East and in Northeast Asia. He blogs on international politics at www.dansmithsblog.com.