Dr. Megan K. Duncan Smith is the Programs Coordinator at the Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University. She is responsible for the research, education, and events programs at HURI. Megan manages HURI's Research Fellowship Program, including the Mihaychuk Postdoctoral Fellowship, HURI Research Fellowship, and Jacyk Distinguished Fellowship, as well as the visiting scholar, institute associate, and Harvard student research grant programs. Megan administers the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute, which includes four courses at the Harvard Summer School, a large scholarship program, lecture series, and other programing for HUSI students. Megan also oversees and coordinates all events programming at the institute, including the Seminar in Ukrainian Studies event series, Memorial Lectures, Ukraine Study Group events, and other special events. She provides administrative and logistical support for events organized together with the institute director and program directors responsible for HURI's Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program, MAPA: Digital Atlas of Ukraine program and publishing program.

Before joining HURI, Megan was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Soviet History (2019-2020) at the Davis Center of Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard. At the Davis Center, Megan was the Program Coordinator (2018-2020) for The Imperiia Project, working with Dr. Kelly O'Neill and her team to develop EdTech products that utilize historical geospatial data to explore the history of the Russian Empire. As Lecturer in the History Department at Harvard in 2020, Megan taught an undergraduate survey course, Artifacts of the Russian Empire, which explored the history of the Russian Empire through its cultural artifacts. Megan holds a PhD degree in History from Harvard University (2019), with a focus on the history of modern Ukraine and Russia, advised by Serhii Plokhii. Her doctoral dissertation, "Taming the Dnipro Rapids: Nature, National Geography, and Hydro-Engineering in Soviet Ukraine, 1946-1968," examines the renegotiation of Soviet conceptions of the natural environment and national geography in an era of large-scale nature transformation and hydro-engineering. Megan also holds a M.A. in Russian, Eurasian, and Eastern European Studies (2011) from the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. She received a B.A. in Neuroscience (2003) from Amherst College and then managed contemporary art galleries in New York City, where she was introduced to Soviet history through the eyes of artists.