Karen Smith (PhD, Stellenbosch University, South Africa, 2005) is a South African International Relations (IR) scholar currently based at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Previously, she taught at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her research centers on challenging Eurocentrism in IR and exploring contributions from the global South, particularly Africa, to the theory and practice of IR.

She is co-editor of the volume International Relations from the Global South: Doing IR Differently (with Arlene Ticker, Routledge, 2021) and co- author (with Pinar Bilgin) of Thinking Globally About World Politics: Beyond Global I (Palgrave, forthcoming 2024). Karen served as assistant secretary-general and special adviser on the responsibility to protect to the United Nations secretary-general from 2019 to 2021, is a board member of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, and a member of the Africa Working Group of the Global Action Against Mass Atrocity Crimes (GAAMAC).

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