Professor Clare McGlynn's research highlights the need for urgent action, the harms of image-based sexual abuse and why we must focus on the harms victims experience, rather than the motivations of perpetrators.
Professor Clare McGlynn
A key focus of the research is to secure better laws and policies to tackle all forms of image-based sexual abuse – a term that refers to the non-consensual taking, making and/or sharing of intimate images without consent, including threats to share and ‘deepfakes’.
Professor McGlynn’s early work with Professor Erika Rackley developed the term 'image-based sexual abuse' to better explain the nature and harms of these abuses. In 2019, together with colleagues across the UK, Australia and New Zealand, she produced a landmark report entitled Shattering Lives and Myths which identified legal and policy failings that must urgently be addressed. She actively engages in public debate, with a recent focus on the growing problem of 'deepfake' porn, where ordinary images or videos are altered to make them pornographic. Professor McGlynn participated in a BBC News report on the harms experienced by victim-survivors of deepfake porn, commenting that: 'If we don’t stop this now, we don’t try and change things now, this is going to just become the next epidemic of abuse'.
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