| Birth
Place: Washington, DC United
States of America
Father:
Professor Joseph F. Douglas, Sr
Mother: Edna Nichols Douglas
A
native of Washington, DC, Marian Douglas' expertise includes gender, ethnicity
and diversity, radio and television journalism, communication
research, and post-conflict mediation and reconstruction.
She
has worked in Africa, Europe and the Americas and her languages include
French, Spanish and Italian and functional Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, and
Macedonian. Ms Douglas is an observer member of ALNAP - the Active
Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action
- an international forum for improving quality and accountability of
humanitarian action, based at the Overseas Development Institute in
London, UK.
In
September 2003 she joined more than 10,000 women to run the first
International Women's 10K Run against HIV/AIDS in Nairobi, Kenya.
She
supports women's and girls' opportunities in recreational, team and
individual sports & fitness, both as a strategy for women's
participation in conflict resolution and civil society development and for
individual well being.
She
holds a B.A. in Communication Studies from Pennsylvania State University.
Her gender work in the US has included service on the boards of
the YWCA of York, PA, and the National Institute for Women of Color,
founded by Sharon Parker in Washington, DC.
Ms Douglas
was a drafter of the 2002 Kampala Resolution on Women, Peace and
Conflict, and also of the Vienna Declaration of Africans and African
Descendants (2001).
In
2001 she was an NGO delegate to the 2nd UN Prep Comm for the
World Conference against Racism, held in Geneva, Switzerland.
Remarks of MSP Patricia Ferguson (Glasgow Maryhill) honouring Joseph F .
Douglas, Sr. for Tartan Day 2001. From Scottish Parliament
Official Report Vol 11, No 06, Thursday 15 March 2001.
"... Today, I was told of an interesting piece of history.
Alexander Hamilton may have drafted the US constitution, which declares
that all men are created equal, but it was black Scots Americans —the
descendants of African slaves and Scottish settlers—who
helped to give substance to those aspirations two centuries later. One of
them was Professor Joseph Douglas. I do not have time to go into Professor
Douglas's entire curriculum vitae, which is long and distinguished, but I
will say that he is a lifelong campaigner in America for higher education
for all and was the first black professor of engineering at Penn State
University.
I wanted to mention Professor Douglas not only because of his Scots
ancestry, but because he ties us in with the idea of using new technology.
Professor Douglas's daughter, Marion, works for the United Nations in
Macedonia. Having watched a meeting of our Equal Opportunities Committee
in February this year, she brought Professor Douglas's heritage to our
attention. She decided that, since she had, as it were, found the Scottish
Parliament, she would tell us about her own heritage. It is interesting to
note that new technology is beginning to reap dividends in promoting the
culture of Scotland and the Parliament of Scotland as far afield as
Macedonia."
[Actually Marian lived in Skopje, Macedonia and worked nearby in
Kosovo with OSCE - Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe -
not the UN.]
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