Dr. Paula Garb is the author of numerous publications, about her journeys between the US and Russia since the 1960s, and peacebuilding in the South Caucasus since the 1990s.
Originally from San Francisco, Paula married a Russian Ukrainian in the late 1960s and raised their two sons in Moscow, mostly as a single mom until 1990. In the 1980s, she and her teenagers participated in dialogues between American and Soviet citizens concerned about the nuclear arms race. Paula graduated from Moscow State University and completed her PhD at the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology.
At the University of California, Irvine (UCI) Paula co-founded the Center for Citizen Peacebuilding and for twenty years was its co-director. She remains on the Center’s board and is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Peacemaking Practice at George Mason University. Since 1994, she has facilitated citizen dialogues and taught peaceful problem-solving skills in post-Soviet conflict zones. For 25 years at UCI she taught anthropology, mediation, conflict resolution, civic and community engagement, and gang mediation at UCI and California State University, LA. Her commitment to mainstreaming peace literacy worldwide inspires her work as a peacebuilder and educator.
Paula is writing a memoir of untold stories about her family’s journeys between the two countries she calls home— the US and Russia— and their relevance to war and peace.
She lives with her life partner in Manhattan and Southern California parenting their affectionate Golden Retriever and Chihuahua. Her creativity and sanity depend on playing with family and friends, peacebuilding, writing, reading, swimming and dancing.