Natalia Kucirkova and Sonia Livingstone, The Conversation

Natalia Kucirkova is a Senior Research Associate University College London whose researche spans academia, commercial and other sectors to explore innovative ways of supporting children’s reading engagement with digital books and the role of personalisation in early learning. She has developed an award-winning app, ‘Our Story’, for children's story-making and has widely published on early literacy and children’s use of technology. Natalia is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Arts, Governor for Swallowfield Lower School, Chair of the judging panel for the UKLA Children's Digital Book Awards, and Co-Chair of the WG3 COST Action and Advisory Board Member for Save The Children Sonia Livingstone is a full professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. She teaches master's courses in media and communications theory, methods, and audiences, and supervises doctoral students researching questions of audience, publics and users in the changing media landscape. She is author or editor of twenty 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.'