Professor Smith is Professorial Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Professor Emerita in International Security at Cranfield University, UK and Editor if the European Journal of Korean Studies. Professor Smith received her PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics and has held fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2019/20 and 2012/2013), the East-West Center, Honolulu (2008 and 2015), Kyushu University (2010), the United States Institute of Peace (2001/2002), and held a Fulbright award at Stanford University (1994/1995).

Professor Smith first visited the DPRK in 1990 as an academic, and later while on secondment to United Nations agencies for two years, lived in Pyongyang and worked in every province bar the heavily militarised Chagang province. Professor Smith earned and holds a (still valid) North Korean driving license.

Professor Smith has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts since 1996; and is a member of the Council of the British Association of Korean Studies. Professor Smith was appointed as a UN ‘global expert’ on Korea in 2010; and was a member of the UK Economic and Research Council Research Committee from 2010-2015. Professor Smith was honoured to be invited by the US NGO AmeriCares, patron President George H. W. Bush, to be one of a five member Honorary Committee – with former President of the United States George W. Bush, the then US Ambassador to the United Nations John Negroponte, and the then Governor of New York George Pataki and the Governor of Connecticut - to commemorate the 20 years anniversary of AmeriCares operations, at an event held in Wall Street, New York, May 2002.

Professor Smith’s publications include The impact of sanctions on international humanitarian assistance to the DPRK. Vienna. Open Nuclear Network. 2024; North Korea’s Food Security Strategy: Analytically Flawed, Inherently Fragile, in Robert Carlin and Chung-in Moon (eds). Understanding Kim Jong-un’s North Korea: Regime Dynamics, Negotiation, and Engagement. Lanham: Lexington, 2022; Sanctions and food insecurity in North Korea: Where next for international public policy (in Korean). KDI Review of the North Korean Economy,. Vol 23. no.5. May 2021: Ethics of United Nations sanctions on North Korea: effectiveness, necessity and proportionality, Critical Asian Studies, Vol. 52 No. 2, 2020; North Korea: Markets and Military Rule (Cambridge University Press, 2015); North Korea: Markets and Military Rule - translated into Korean, (Seoul: Changbi, 2017); Nutrition and Health in North Korea: What's New, What's Changed and Why It Matters’, North Korean Review, Vol. 12 No. 1, Spring 2016, pp. 7-34; ‘Crimes against Humanity? Unpacking the North Korean Human Rights Debate’, Critical Asian Studies, Vol. 46 No. 1, 2014, pp. 127-143; [joint edited] Reframing North Korean Human Rights; Critical Asian Studies, December 2013/ March 2014, Reconstituting Korean Security (2007); Hungry for Peace: International Security, Humanitarian Assistance and Social Change in the DPRK (2005) and [joint-edited] North Korea in the New World Order (1996).

Professor Smith is regularly called on to advise government agencies worldwide, international organisations, NGOs and think tanks, on North Korea's society economics, politics and international relations. She is a frequent broadcaster for global media.