Clare Mary Smith McGlynn (born 1970) is a Professor of Law at Durham University in the UK and leading expert on violence against women and girls and gender equality. She advises governments, civil society and social media platforms regarding online and image-based sexual abuse, and works closely with survivors to strengthen the law. In 2020, she was appointed King’s Counsel honoris causa in recognition of her role influencing law reform regarding image-based abuse and sexual violence. In 2024 she was appointed to the Judicial Appointments Commission for a three year term as Lay Commissioner. McGlynn has also served as a member of the UK Parliament's Independent Expert Panel.
McGlynn specialises in the legal regulation of pornography, image-based sexual abuse (formerly known as revenge pornography), cyberflashing, online abuse, violence against women, and gender equality in the legal profession.Professor Clare McGlynn KC (Hon) https://www.claremcglynn.com/ 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 is a member of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Experts on Combating Technology-Facilitated Violence against Women and Girls.Council of Europe (2025). https://www.coe.int/fr/web/genderequality/committee-of-experts-on-combating-technology-facilitated-violence-against-women-and-girls-gec/pc-evio-1 Her active role in supporting women and girls led to her being named as an ‘outstanding’ advocate by Glamour magazine on International Women’s Day 2025.
She extensively contributes to national and international media and public debates, regularly being interviewed on the UK’s flagship political programme BBC Radio 4 Today, as well as BBC Woman’s Hour, breakfast TV, Channel 4 News, and all mainstream media. Her expert opinion is featured in many documentaries including BBC Panorama 'The Secret World of Trading Nudes’, the controversial Channel 4 documentary with Vicky Pattinson ‘My Deepfake Sex Tape’, German national TV’s ZDF documentary on deepfake porn and in Austria, the NZZ programme ‘Fake Porn, Real Victims’.NZZ (2023). https://www.nzz.ch/english/video-fake-porn-real-victims-how-women-become-targets-of-artificial-intelligence-ld.1754001
She has written op-eds for the Independent,McGlynn, C. (22 July 2021). A proposed new law criminalising cyberflashing is welcome – but it has one major flaw. The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/cyberflashing-new-law-online-safety-bill-b1888633.html Daily Express,Braeger, E. (4 July 2022). Campaigners call for 'cyber flashing' to become a criminal offence. The Daily Express. https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1635381/cyber-flashing-campaign-criminal-offence the Irish Journal,Vera-Gray, F., and McGlynn, C. (1 October 2023). Fake Porn, Real Victims. The Irish Journal. https://www.thejournal.ie/readme/online-safety-spain-artificial-intelligence-6182025-Oct2023/ the Huffington Post,McGlynn, C., and Vera-Gray, F. (28 June 2019). Porn Website T&Cs Are A Works Of Fiction. We Need Radical Measures To Take Them On. The Huffington Post. https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/porn-website-tcs_uk_5d132febe4b09125ca466358 and the New Statesman.McGlynn, C., and Rackley, E. (9 September 2021). Why criminalise the possession of rape pornography? The New Statesman. https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2014/02/why-criminalise-possession-rape-pornography Her commentary on criminalising ‘deepfake porn’ in The Conversation has been widely translated.
Her research and advocacy has been instrumental to the introduction of new laws tackling online and image-based sexual abuse. McGlynn played a key role in the campaignEnd Violence Against Women. (7 January 2025). Campaign win: law to stop deepfake abuse. https://www.endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk/campaign-win-law-to-stop-deepfake-abuse/ to criminalise creating sexually explicit deepfakes (‘deepfake porn’) in England and Wales, and was part of the coalition that secured a change in the Online Safety Act 2023 to require guidance on violence against women and girls. She was central to Rape Crisis London's campaign to 'close the loophole' that makes possession of rape pornography lawful in England and Wales.House of Commons Library. (2016). Extreme pornography: UK law. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn05078/ 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.
Biography
McGlynn was born in Scotland, in 1970. At the age of 18 she moved to England to begin a degree in law at Durham University. After graduating in 1991, she went on to study at the College of Law, completing her Law Society Final Examinations in 1992. Following this she returned to Durham University as a teaching fellow. It was at Durham University that she completed her Master of Jurisprudence in 1996. Over the next four years she worked as a lecturer at the nearby University of Newcastle, before returning once again to Durham University as a reader in 1999. In 2004 she was promoted to Professor of Law, and remains highly active in academic research and teaching. She has served as deputy Head of the Law School and Deputy Head of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Health (Research), where she was responsible for diversity and equality, research strategy and the Research Excellence Framework. She was a member of the university's Taskforce on Sexual Violence and the university's governing body, University Council. McGlynn was also a member of the REF2021 Law Assessment Panel which reviews all UK legal research.
McGlynn's career also extends beyond academia. From 1993 to 1995 she trained as a solicitor with Herbert Smith Freehills, qualifying as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales in 1995. In 2013 McGlynn played a key role in the success of a campaign to criminalise rape pornography in England and Wales. She was a trustee of Rape Crisis Tyneside and Northumberland from 2009 to 2019.
Work on image-based sexual abuse McGlynn's research (with Erika Rackley) developed the concept of image-based sexual abuse to describe all forms of the non-consensual creation and distribution of private sexual images, including 'revenge pornography' and upskirting.Clare McGlynn, Erika Rackley, Image-Based Sexual Abuse, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Volume 37, Issue 3, Autumn 2017, Pages 534–561, https://doi.org/10.1093/ojls/gqw033 This term is now used internationally to describe these forms of abuse and McGlynn's research has shaped law reform campaigns across the world.
McGlynn’s research recommends criminalising the creation, solicitation and distribution of ‘deepfake pornography’.McGlynn, C. and Toparlak, R.T. (2025) ‘The "new voyeurism": criminalizing the creation of "deepfake porn"’. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12527 She has advised organisations such as HateAid on law reform options Creating Sexually Explicit Deepfakes: Options for Criminal Law Reform Expert Opinion by Professor Clare McGlynn, Durham University, UK and Rüya Tuna Toparlak, University of Lucerne, Switzerland. Available at: https://hateaid.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/McGlynn-Toparlak-Deepfakes-Briefing-August-2024-FINAL.pdf and recommends replacing the term ‘deepfake porn’ with ‘sexual digital forgeries’ McGlynn, C., and Toparlak, 2025. Why we need to talk about sexual digital forgeries not ‘deepfake porn’. Available at: https://journaloflawandsociety.co.uk/blog/why-we-need-to-talk-about-sexual-digital-forgeries-not-deepfake-porn/ which better reflects the nature and harms of this abuse.
In 2019, McGlynn published a report with colleagues "Shattering Lives and Myths" drawing on interviews with over 50 victims and stakeholders which was launched in Parliament at a roundtable chaired by Maria Miller MP and attended by many victims, criminal justice organisations, women's support groups, MPs and members of the House of Lords. Her work has played a key role in national debates, including in ITV News, and in legislative debates in the House of Lords. She has given evidence before the Scottish Justice Committee on proposed reforms in Scotland, recommending a new law focusing on the harms of victims, not the motives of the perpetrators, as well as giving presentations and evidence to policy-makers across Iceland, Ireland Presented at the Annual Conference of the Irish Association of Criminal Justice Research & Development Conference. and Australia. In 2022, her evidence before the Northern Ireland Justice Committee influenced news laws on upskirting which go further than English law, supporting the campaign by two women teachers who were upskirted by a male school pupil to change the law.
McGlynn and her colleagues argue that 'revenge pornography' should be recognized as a form of sexual assault, that it should be seen as part of a pattern of sexual violence, along with other forms of image-based sexual abuse, and subject fully to the criminal law. In particular, she and her colleague criticized the legal loophole which meant that upskirting was not fully covered by the criminal law in England and Wales.
In November 2019, she was invited to South Korea to share international best practice in supporting victims of image-based sexual abuse See https://www.claremcglynn.com/image-based-abuse and she has worked with Facebook, TikTok and Google to support their policies on non-consensual intimate images.
Cyberflashing McGlynn’s research was influential in the adoption of the new criminal offence of cyberflashing – sending penis images to someone without their consent. She gave evidence before the UK Parliament to recommend changes to the Online Safety Bill which introduced the new offence. Her book with Kelly Johnson Cyberflashing: recognising harms, reforming laws was published in 2021 and is the first comprehensive study of the nature, harms and prevalence of cyberflashing. It identifies the gaps in the criminal laws of a range of countries and makes recommendations for reform. McGlynn regularly speaks to the media about cyberflashing, as well as supporting the campaign by dating app Bumble to raise awareness and change the law. Her testimony before the Northern Ireland Assembly led Justice Minister Naomi Long to introduce a cyberflashing offence in Northern Ireland.McGlynn, Clare (2022). Northern Ireland Assembly, Committee for Justice Justice (Sexual Offences and Trafficking Victims) Bill Evidence Submission from Professor Clare McGlynn, Durham Law School, Durham University. Available at: https://www.niassembly.gov.uk/globalassets/documents/committees/2017-2022/justice/primary-legislation/justice-etc-bill/20210924-mcglynn-ni-intimate-image-abuse-and-upskirting-sept-2021.pdf
Sexually violent pornography McGlynn and colleagues published one of the largest studies to date of online porn finding that 1 in 8 titles on mainstream pornography websites described sexual violence. This research featured in the New York Times articleKristof, N. (2024) Why Do We Let Corporations Profit From Rape Videos?, The New York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/16/opinion/sunday/companies-online-rape-videos.html. by award-winning journalist Nick Kristof which directly led to PayPal removing its services from XVideos.