Steven Lawry is Senior Research Fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he manages an international research program on philanthropy and poverty reduction.

Lawry was President of Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, from January 2006 to August 2007. He held a variety of senior positions at the Ford Foundation from 1992 to 2006. He served as Ford’s Assistant Representative and Rural Poverty and Resources Program Officer for South Africa and Namibia from 1992 to 1997. He was the Foundation’s Representative for the Middle East and North Africa, based in Cairo, from 1997 to 2001, and Director of the Office of Management Services at Ford’s New York headquarters from 2001 to 2006. Before joining the Ford Foundation, Lawry was Associate Director, responsible for Africa programs, at the Land Tenure Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where his research focused on land tenure arrangements and land reform in sub-Saharan Africa.

Lawry has lived in Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, The Sudan and Egypt, and has worked extensively in South Africa, Uganda, Mali, India and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Lawry’s research and professional interests and personal views and values have been strongly influenced by his many years living and working abroad, including in areas of acute inter-state and inter-communal conflict. He is particularly interested in questions of how inter-communal conflict shapes personal and group identity and affects the long term prospects for peace.

A native Floridian, Lawry received a BA degree in government and international relations and a MSc. degree in urban and regional planning from The Florida State University. He received a doctorate from the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Lawry is married to Deborah Kahn, who teaches medieval art history at Boston University. His stepson William Freedberg is an avid bird-watcher and fisherman.