Professor Sonia Livingstone DPhil (Oxon), OBE, FBA, FBPS, FAcSS, FRSA, is a full professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. She has published 20 books and advised the UK government, European Commission, European Parliament, UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, Council of Europe, OECD, ITU and UNICEF on media audiences, children and young people’s risks and opportunities, media literacy and rights in the digital environment. She directs the Digital Futures for Children centre.
Baroness Beeban Kidron OBE is a British filmmaker, Crossbench Peer in the House of Lords, and an advocate for children’s rights in the digital world. She is the Founder and Chair of 5Rights Foundation, a charity that works to create policy and practical solutions to build the digital world children and young people deserve, and a Visiting Professor in Practice at LSE. 5Rights funds Digital Futures for Children and Baroness Kidron chairs the Management Committee.
Professor Ellen Helsper is Professor of Digital Inequalities in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE, where she also serves as Doctoral Programme Director for the department's PhD Programmes. Her current research interests include the links between social and digital inequalities; mediated interpersonal communication; participatory immersive digital spaces (VR, ER); and quantitative and qualitative methodological developments in media and communications research. She serves on the Management Committee of the Digital Futures for Children centre.
Dr Kim Ringmar Sylwander is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Digital Futures for Children centre. Her research centres on how children and youth navigate technologically mediated environments, including issues related to sexual consent in online contexts, sexualised and racialised hate and young people’s consumption of pornography.
Dr Mariya Stoilova is the Manager of the Digital Futures for Children centre. She is also a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Media and Communications, LSE. With a strong focus on multi-method evidence generation and cross-national comparative analyses, her work focuses on the intersection of child rights and digital technology use, well-being and family support, and intimate life, citizenship and social inequalities.
Clément Taquet is the Chief of Staff at 5Rights Foundation, bringing comprehensive knowledge and experience in the non-profit sector from a youth-led perspective. Clément co-founded Concrete Jungle Foundation, an NGO dedicated to building and supporting resilient youth communities worldwide, and has implemented projects across Africa, the Caribbean, and South America.
Dr Didem Özkul is a Research Consultant at the DFC centre. Didem is interested in the social uses and societal implications of emerging digital technologies. Her recent research focuses on AI and human agency, and the social uses and implications of human-machine communication.
Laura Betancourt is a Research Associate at the Digital Futures for Children centre. She focuses on how digital technology policy, data, and society intersect. Her research uses interdisciplinary and mixed-method approaches, emphasisisng futures thinking and foresight, to assess emerging technologies and wicked problems in the digital enviroment. Laura holds an MPA in Digital Technologies and Policy from UCL, an MSc in Media and Communication Governance from LSE, and a BA in Government and International Relations from Universidad Externado de Colombia.
Gazal Shekhawat is a Research Associate at the Digital Futures for Children centre where she contributes to emerging research projects, administration, and communications. Gazal is also a PhD researcher at the Media and Communications Department, LSE. Her work explores how social change and digital media shape the lives of women in India’s provincial regions.
Zichen (Jess) Hu is a Research Associate at the Digital Futures for Children centre. Zichen (Jess) is also a PhD researcher at the Media and Communications Department, LSE where she studies dynamic networks and emergent publics of Covid-19 vaccine conspiracy theories via communities on 4chan, 8kun and Reddit. She has an MSc in Politics and Communications from the LSE and a BA degree in International Communications with Spanish from the University of Nottingham Ningbo, China.
Saumyadeep Mandal is a Research Associate at the Digital Futures for Children centre. Saumyadeep is also a PhD researcher at the Media and Communications Department, conducting his doctoral research on caste, cinema, Dalits, audiences and affect. Saumyadeep holds a BA in Sociology from the University of Calcutta, India, an MA in Sociology from the Presidency University, India and and an MSc in Media and Communications from the LSE.