Sonia Livingstone

London School of Economics and Political Science

Biography

Sonia Livingstone is a full professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. She is author or editor of eighteen books and many academic articles and chapters. She has been visiting professor at the Universities of Bergen, Copenhagen, Harvard, Illinois, Milan, Paris II, and Stockholm, and is on the editorial board of several leading journals. She is past President of the International Communication Association, ICA. Sonia was awarded the title of Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2014 ‘for services to children and child internet safety.’ Taking a comparative, critical and contextualised approach, Sonia’s research asks why and how the changing conditions of mediation are reshaping everyday practices and possibilities for action, identity and communication rights. Her empirical work examines the opportunities and risks afforded by digital and online technologies, including for children and young people at home and school, for developments in media and digital literacies, and for audiences, publics and the public sphere more generally.

She directs the 33-country network, EU Kids Online, funded by the EC’s Safer Internet Programme. She is now beginning a project, Preparing for a digital future, which follows on the recently-completed project, The Class, both part of the MacArthur Foundation-funded Connected Learning Research Network. She serves on the Executive Board of the UK’s Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS), for which she is the Evidence Champion. She has served on the Department of Education’s Ministerial Taskforce for Home Access to Technology for Children, the Home Secretary’s Taskforce for Child Protection on the Internet and the boards of Voice of the Listener and Viewer and the Internet Watch Foundation. She has advised Ofcom, Department for Education, Home Office, Economic and Social Research Council, BBC, The Byron Review, UNICEF, ITU, OECD, European Commission, European Parliament, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England, among others.

See her home page here, selected publications here and her blog posts here.

Interviews:

• Livingstone, S., interviewed by Helen Guo. (2013). Q + A with Sonia Livingstone. Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University.
• Livingstone, S. interview on Internet Safety and Children. (2013). Society for Media Psychology and Technology, American Psychological Association.
• Livingstone, S., interviewed by Nigel Warburton and David Edmunds (2012). Children and the Internet. Podcast, Social Science Bites.