Cynthia Banham

Cynthia Banham (born July 1972) is an Australian journalist and academic in the fields of political science and international law. Initially working as a lawyer, Banham switched to journalism in 1999, and became foreign affairs and defence correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald. In 2007, she was on board Garuda Indonesia Flight 200 when it crashed near Adisutjipto International Airport, sustaining injuries which resulted in the amputation of both her legs.

Early life and legal career Banham was born and raised in Sydney. She studied a combined arts/law degree at Macquarie University and a graduate certificate in legal practice at University of Technology Sydney (UTS). She worked at a solicitor and paralegal for various firms, before giving up her legal career to become a writer and travelling for 18 months.

Journalism career In 1999, she began writing for Richard Ackland's online legal journals The Justinian and Gazette of Law and Journalism. In 2000, she was hired by The Sydney Morning Herald as a reporter, and was posted to the paper's Canberra bureau where she became a correspondent and columnist covering foreign affairs and defence. In 2004, she completed a master's degree in international affairs at UTS.

Academic career Banham left journalism in 2012, and pursued an academic career. She was granted a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) from the Australian National University (ANU) in 2014, after completing a doctoral thesis supervised by legal scholar Hilary Charlesworth, on the responses of Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom towards the imprisonment and torture of their citizens by the United States during the "war on terror". Her thesis was adapted and published as Liberal Democracies and the Torture of their Citizens by Hart Publishing.

Publications In addition to the publication of her doctoral thesis, Banham also authored a memoir, A Certain Light, which parallels her family history (in particular her maternal grandfather Alfredo, an Italian military internee during World War II) with her own experiences in surviving the Garuda crash.

Personal life Banham met Michael Harvey, a journalist for the Herald Sun, in 2003 when they were both in the Canberra press gallery. They married in 2009, and their son was born in 2012.