Katherine M. Griffis, J.D.
Internal Consultant

Katherine is an instructor with the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Special Studies/UAB Options, where she has taught since 1980 and President of Griffis Consulting, which is involved in international and domestic project development, educational development, and museum consulting.

Katherine is also an Egyptologist and a member of the International Association of Egyptologists, the American Schools or Oriental Research, the American Research Center in Egypt, the Egypt Exploration Society, and the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities, among other organizations.

For both business and professional purposes, she has found the use of the Internet a necessary tool for communications. Katherine has written articles and been interviewed in various media on the issue of online harassment, based upon her own experiences with online harassment since 1995, as well as reports of online incident of a campaign of multiple false postings to Usenet, which focused upon her credentials, personal and business reputation. This led to a civil lawsuit, in which Alabama Courts ruled such posts were defamatory in January, 1998.

Katherine has served as a volunteer consultant on the issues of cyberstalking and online abuse to the following organizations:

• Department of Justice Study on Cyberstalking
• Federal Bureau of Investigation, Birmingham and Atlanta Regional Offices
• University of Alabama at Birmingham Police Department
• City of Birmingham Police Department

Katherine has written articles and been interviewed in various media on the issue of online harassment, much of it based upon her own experiences with online harassment.