Malinda S. Smith

Malinda S. Smith is a Canadian political scientist. She is the inaugural Vice-Provost of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, an Associate Vice President Research and a full professor of political science at the University of Calgary. Previously, she was a professor of political science at the University of Alberta, where she also held a 2018 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Fellow and served as a Provost Fellow in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Policy in the Office of the Provost. She specializes in equity, social justice, diversity and intersectionality studies, particularly as they are practiced in higher education institutions, as well as in international relations, comparative politics, African security studies and international inequality.

Career Education Smith obtained a PhD in political science (International Relations and Political Philosophy) from the University of Alberta. She also played field hockey for the University of Alberta and the province of Alberta. Before joining the Department of Political Science in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta in 2004, she was a professor at Athabasca University in Athabasca, Alberta.

In 2020 Smith moved from the University of Alberta to the University of Calgary, where she was appointed the inaugural Vice-Provost of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, and a full professor of political science.

Research Smith is the co-author of The Equity Myth: Racialization and Indigeneity at Canadian Universities (2017). She has been the editor or co-editor of 7 books. She was the sole editor of Globalizing Africa (2003), Beyond the African Tragedy: Discourses on Development and the Global Economy (2006), and Securing Africa: Post-9/11 Discourses on Terrorism (2010). She is the co-editor of 4 books, including Critical Concepts: An Introduction to Politics, 5/E (Pearson, 2013), 6/E (Oxford UP, 2023), Nuances of Blackness in the Canadian Academy (2022), and States of Race: Critical Race Feminism for the 21st Century (2010). Many of Smith's articles in peer-reviewed journals have focused on equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility in academia, including systematic studies of diversity among the leadership of the U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities and the recipients of the Canada Research Chair program.

Smith's work has been cited, or she has been quoted on topics related to her work, in news outlets like the Edmonton Journal, the Calgary Herald, CBC News, Maclean's, and La Rotonde.

Positions Smith has been the President and the Vice President of the Canadian regional branch of the International Studies Association, and was its 2018-19 Distinguished Scholar. She has also served as the President and the Vice President of the Academic Women's Association at the University of Alberta. She has also been the Vice President for Equity Issues at the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and a Provost Fellow in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Policy at the University of Alberta.

In 2020, Smith was named the inaugural Vice Provost (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) at the University of Calgary in Calgary, Alberta, with a starting date in August 2020. to "five fellows each year in recognition of outstanding achievement, innovative approaches to issues of public policy, and commitment to public engagement". The purpose of Smith's Fellowship was to support her book project, A Seat at the Table: Engendering Black Canadian Pasts and Futures, which aims to centre Black Canadians in Canada's national stories about its legal, political, and educational systems.