Advisory Board members
Our Advisory Board meets several times a year to lend their skills, guidance and knowledge to the Digital Futures for Children centre.
Patrick Burton is an independent research consultant and a Senior Research Associate at Tech Legality. He has over 25 years’ experience conducting research on all forms of violence against children and has been working in the area of online safety and child rights online; serving as Executive Director of the Centre for Justice and Crime Prevention (CJCP) in South Africa for 15 years. He has undertaken primary research and data collection on different aspects of child online safety and child rights in more than 25 countries.
Philip D. Jaffé is professor at the University of Geneva and the founding director of its Centre for Children’s Rights Studies. In 2018, he was elected to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and is currently serving a second mandate until 2027. A clinical and forensic psychologist trained in Switzerland and the USA, he remains a practising clinical (licensed psychotherapist) and forensic psychologist, as well as a court-appointed expert witness.
Pedro Hartung is a Children’s Rights and Nature lawyer and serves as CEO of Alana, a Brazil-rooted global organization dedicated to addressing the world’s most pressing challenges through a child-centered and intersectional approach, including in the digital environment. He holds a PhD in Public Law and has been a Visiting Researcher at Harvard Law School’s Child Advocacy Program and the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, and is a professor at Fundação Getulio Vargas. Pedro is the author of the book "Taking Children’s Rights Seriously" and has held key public roles in Brazil, including serving as a member of the National Council for the Rights of Children and Adolescents (CONANDA) and as a member of the Brazilian National Justice Human Rights Observatory at the National Council of Justice (CNJ).
Mimi Ito is a cultural anthropologist, learning scientist, entrepreneur, and an advocate for connected learning—learning that is equity-oriented, centered on youth interest, and socially connected. She is Professor in Residence and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Chair in Digital Media and Learning at the University of California, Irvine, where she directs the Connected Learning Lab; as well as co-founder of Connected Camps, a non-profit providing online learning experiences for kids in all walks of life.
Gerison Lansdown was the founder director of the Children’s Rights Alliance for England and has been involved in developing general comments for the Committee on the Rights of the Child, including on the digital environment. She is an adjunct professor at University College Cork and Carleton University Canada, has an Honorary Doctorate from the Open University, University of East London, Carleton University, and the University of Central Lancashire, and chairs the ODI Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence Advisory Board.
Professor Amy Orben is a Research Professor and Programme Leader at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and Fellow of St. John’s College at the University of Cambridge. She directs an internationally renowned research programme, Digital Mental Health Group, investigating the links between mental health and digital technology use in adolescence. She advises governments, health officials and civil servants around the world and has received a range of prestigious awards including the Medical Research Council Early Career Impact Prize (2022).
Usha Raman is an independent researcher and writer based in India. She recently retired as Professor, Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad. Her research and teaching interests span children and media, digital cultures, feminist media studies, and health and science communication. She has served as Vice-President of IAMCR (2020-24) and is co-founder of FemLab, a futures of work research activist collaborative. She is co-editor of a collection of essays, Childscape, Mediascape: Children and Media in India (Orient Blackswan, 2023).
Julian Sefton-Green is professor of new media education at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia where he is currently a Chief Investigator and program co-lead at the Australian Centre of Excellence researching the Digital Child. He also holds a professor II position in the faculty of educational sciences at the University of Oslo. He has written widely on many aspects of media education, new technologies, creativity, digital cultures and informal learning and has authored, co-authored or edited 20 books and spoken at over 50 conferences in 20 countries <www.julianseftongreen.net>
Kate Tilleczek holds the Canada Research Chair at York University, Toronto, Canada, in Youth, Education & Global Good and is Director and Founder of the Young Lives Research Laboratory (YLRL). She leads the Partnership for Youth and Planetary Wellbeing and Youth in the Digital Age, a 10-year study of the meaning and influences of digital technologies for the wellbeing of young people in the Americas and beyond. Kate is also the Director of Canada’s first Digital Wellbeing Hub, co-developed alongside young Canadians.