Professor Ciara Smyth is an established expert in the field of refugee and immigration law at the international, regional and domestic levels, with a particular focus on EU asylum law. She has published in many of the leading international journals, including the Common Market Law Review, the European Law Journal, the Human Rights Law Review, the International Journal of Refugee Law, the European Journal of Migration and Law and the Journal of Refugee Studies. Her book, European Asylum Law and the Rights of the Child (Routledge, 2014), explores the extent to which the European regional system of refugee protection is consistent with the rights of the child.

Before joining the University of Galway, Ciara worked for a number of non-governmental and intergovernmental organisations in Ireland and abroad, including the Irish Commission for Prisoners Overseas and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Ciara continues to be involved in supporting civil society organisations working in the asylum and immigration space at the local and national level, such as the Immigrant Council of Ireland, the Irish Refugee Council and Galway City Partnerships Bridge Project. Ciara has also worked with the State on asylum reform and was the only academic member of the government-appointed McMahon Working Group on Direct Provision. She is the leading academic voice in media discussions on asylum and immigration in Ireland, bringing facts and balance to an otherwise polarised debate.

Ciara holds a PhD from Leiden University, the Netherlands, for which she was awarded a Max Van Der Stoel Human Rights award in 2013; an LL.M in Human Rights (with distinction) from Queens University Belfast; and an LL.B and B.A. from the University of Galway. Ciara is Programme Director of the LL.M in International Migration and Refugee Law and Policy at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, which began in September 2019. She was co-founder of the University of Galway Inclusive Centenaries Scholarship - the forerunner to the current University of Sanctuary Scholarship, in which she is also heavily involved. Ciara was recipient of a Presidents Award for Teaching Excellence in 2018 and a Presidents Award for Research Excellence (Research Supervision) in 2024.

Ciara researches in the areas of refugee and immigration law, policy and practice at the international, European and domestic levels and is interested in how these fields intersect with human rights law. Her specialised interest is the human rights implications of EU asylum law. Her recent research includes an exploration of the history of Ireland's a la carte approach to the EU Common European Asylum System, the interaction between mutual trust and the fundamental rights of children under the EU Dublin Regulation; the permissibility of the immigration detention of children under international and regional human rights law; and the implications of adopting a child-rights approach to the refugee definition.

Ciara is currently supervising two PhD students. Philip Collins, who she is co-supervising with Professor Siobhan Mullally, is conducting research into the normative content of the right to asylum and how this right is affected in the US immigration-control context. Jennifer Hough is conducting an exploration of asylum seeker coercion and fundamental rights subversion within the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum.

Ciara has supervised four PhD students to completion:

-Dr Stefano Angeleri's PhD research concerned the right to health of irregular migrants.

-Dr Luke Hamilton, an Irish Research Council scholar, conduced research into constructions of vulnerability in international refugee law.

-Dr Maria Portuondo conducted comparative research into the impact of human rights law on internment during the Troubles in Northern Ireland and in Guantanamo Bay.

-Dr Clara Bosch March, a Hardiman and Irish Research Council scholar, conducted research into the prohibition on the collective expulsion of aliens in the European Convention on Human Rights, with a particular focus on so-called hot returns.

Ciara teaches Public International Law and International Protection of Human Rights, at the undergraduate level in the School of Law, and International Refugee Law and the Common European Asylum System, at the postgraduate level in the Irish Centre for Human Rights.