Sonia Livingstone is Professor of Social Psychology, Department of Media and Communications at LSE, where she teaches master's courses in media and communications theory, methods, and audiences. She is author or editor of seventeen books and many academic articles and chapters. 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. She was President of ICA (the International Communication Association), 2007-8.
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 and identity in public and private spheres. Her empirical work examines the opportunities and risks afforded by digital and online technologies in a range of contexts, including children and young people’s experience of digital media at home and school, developments in media and digital literacies, and the implications of the changing media environment for audiences, publics and the public sphere. More broadly, she is interested in how citizen values (public sphere, rights-based, equity-focused, diversity-promoting) can be better embedded in information and communication infrastructures in institutions, regulators and the lifeworld.
Currently, she directs a 33-country network, EU Kids Online, funded by the EC's Safer Internet Programme. She also directs The Class, as part of the MacArthur Foundation-funded Connected Learning Research Network. She participates in the European COST network, Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies, and leads ECREA's Children, Youth and Media group, and blogs for the LSE Media Policy Project.
She serves on the Executive Board of the UK's Council for Child Internet Safety, for which she is the Evidence Champion. She has, at various times, served on the Department of Education's Ministerial Taskforce for Home Access to Technology for Children, 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, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England.
See selected publications here
