Sonia Livingstone

Sonia Livingstone (BSc Psychology, UCL; DPhil Social Psychology, Oxford) is Professor of Social Psychology and Head of the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is author or editor of fourteen books and many academic articles and chapters. Her research examines children, young people and the internet; social and family contexts and uses of ICT; media and digital literacies; the mediated public sphere; audience reception for diverse television genres; internet use and policy; public understanding of communications regulation; and research methods in media and communications.
Sonia Livingstone serves on Executive Board of the UK's Council for Child Internet Safety, for which she chairs the Expert Research Panel. She also serves on DCSF's Home Access Programme Advisory Group, Ofcom's Media Literacy Research Forum, the Board of the Voice of the Listener and Viewer and, until 2006, as Vice-Chair of the Internet Watch Foundation. At various times, she has advised Ofcom, Department for Children, Schools and Families, Home Office, Economic and Social Research Council, BBC and Higher Education Funding Council for England. She was President of the International Communication Association (2007-8) and continues to serve on ICA's Executive Committee.
Sonia Livingstone currently directs the research network, EU Kids Online II, for the EC’s Safer Internet Programmme. Over the years, she has been awarded research funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, European Science Foundation, European Commission, European Parliament, British Telecom, the BBC, Ofcom, Independent Television Commission, Broadcasting Standards Commission, Advertising Association, ITVA, Leverhulme Trust, and Yorkshire/Tyne-Tees Television. She has held visiting professor positions at the Universities of Copenhagen, Stockholm, Bergen, Illinois, Milan, and Paris II, and is on the editorial board of several leading journals, including New Media and Society, The Communication Review, Journal of Communication, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, European Journal of Communication and Journal of Children and Media. Her recent books include Media Consumption and Public Engagement (with Nick Couldry and Tim Markham; Palgrave, 2007), The International Handbook of Children, Media and Culture (edited with Kirsten Drotner; Sage, 2008),New Media. Sage Benchmarks in Communication (Vols. 1-4, edited with Leah Lievrouw; Sage, 2009), Children and the Internet (Polity, 2009) and Kids Online (edited with Leslie Haddon, The Policy Press, in press).

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