Biography
Dr. Sara M. Smyth is an Associate Professor at La Trobe University Law School in Melbourne, where she is the Director of the Master of Laws (LLM) program and the Coordinator for the Masters of Cyber-Security Program (Law). She is also developing new cyber-law courses and presenting at various conferences and other speaking engagements on cyber-related topics. In 2016, she was a visiting scholar at the Castan Centre for Human Rights at Monash University’s Faculty of Law in Melbourne. In 2015, she was a visiting scholar at Georgetown University Law School in Washington, D.C. prior to joining La Trobe; Sara was an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law and the Director of the Canadian Program in Law at Bond University, Australia from 2012 to 2016.
Sara has consulted extensively to Public Safety Canada and written several books including Cybercrime in Canadian Criminal Law (Second Edition, 2015). Her most recent book, Drone Controversies – Ethical and Legal Debates Surrounding Targeted Strikes and Electronic Surveillance, was published in December, 2016. She has presented widely in North America, Europe and Asia, including the U.S. Department of Defence Cybercrime Conference (2009 and 2010).
Sara has a long and distinguished history as a cyber-law expert From 2009 until 2012, she was an Assistant Professor in the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University where she taught cybercrime courses and was the Associate Director for the International Cybercrime Research Centre. She received a PhD from Osgoode Hall Law School, York University (2008); an LL.M. from the University of Toronto (2005); and a J.D. from the University of Victoria, Canada (2001). She also served as a law clerk at the British Columbia Court of Appeal and practiced law in Vancouver, Canada.