Clare McGlynn

Clare Mary Smith McGlynn is a Professor of Law at Durham University. She specialises in the legal regulation of pornography, image-based sexual abuse, violence against women, and gender equality in the legal profession. In 2020, she was appointed an Honorary QC in recognition of her work on women's equality in the legal profession and shaping new criminal laws on extreme pornography and image-based sexual abuse. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Lund University, Sweden, in 2018 in recognition of the international impact of her research on sexual violence and she is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. She has given evidence before Scottish and UK Parliaments on how to reform laws on sexual violence and online abuse, as well as speaking to policy audiences across Europe and Australia. In November 2019, she was invited to South Korea to share international best practice in supporting victims of image-based sexual abuse and she has worked with Facebook to support their policies on non-consensual intimate images. She regularly contributes to media debates about her areas of expertise, commenting in 2017 on whether pornography should be included on the school curriculum, whether it is ok to watch pornography in public, celebrity image-based sexual abuse, and on the proposed regulation of upskirting in England and Wales. She has submitted evidence to UK and Scottish Parliamentary committees. Her work with Erika Rackley on the cultural harm caused by rape pornography was instrumental in the Scottish Parliament's decision to criminalise possession of such material. McGlynn and Rackley were involved in Rape Crisis London's campaign to 'close the loophole' that makes possession of rape pornography lawful in England and Wales. The campaign was successful, and an amendment to include rape in the definition of 'extreme pornography' was incorporated into the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015.