The Digital Child

Join leading experts in children's digital rights to discuss the practicalities of implementing the UK's Children’s Code.

In this seminar, leading experts in children's digital rights will discuss the practicalities of implementing the Children’s Code, including what it means for tech companies and children’s everyday digital experiences. Panellists will compare the protections afforded to UK children under the Children’s Code with those afforded to Australian children under Australian law and will reflect on what lessons can be learnt from the UK experience.

Please join us in-person at ACMI Melbourne or online to find out more about what this ‘world-first’ law means for children in Australia and across the world. The seminar will run from 5.00pm - 6.15pm, with light refreshments served immediately afterwards.

Meet the panellists

Event Convener: Dr Luci Pangrazio is a Senior Lecturer, Education (Language and Literacy Education) at Deakin University and Chief Investigator at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child.

Panel Chair: Dr Anna Bunn is a senior lecturer in Curtin University’s Law School, based in Perth, Australia, and an Associate Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child. After practising as a solicitor in England and Wales, she lived in Indonesia where she established a non-profit organisation for vulnerable youth and worked as an educator and education manager. In 2008, she moved to Australia to take up a teaching and research position with Curtin Law School. Anna researches into privacy and children’s rights. She is interested in regulatory frameworks governing children’s online presence, as well as understanding norms around image sharing, young people’s online experiences, and the extent to which young people know how to seek redress for online harm.

Panellists:

Sven Bluemmel was appointed under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Vic) (FOI Act) as the inaugural Victorian Information Commissioner in September 2017. Prior to his current role, Mr Bluemmel served as Western Australian Information Commissioner for eight years. Before 2009, Mr Bluemmel held senior positions in the Western Australian Public Sector Commission, the Department of the Premier and Cabinet (WA) and the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department in Canberra. Mr Bluemmel previously practised law in the private sector in Melbourne and Perth in the areas of information and privacy law.

Emma Day is a human rights lawyer, specialising in children’s rights and technology. She holds an LLM in international human rights law from the University of London (2010) and a second LLM in law and technology from UC Berkeley where she was a Fulbright scholar in 2019-2020. She qualified as a lawyer in Canada in 2010. Emma has been working on human rights issues for more than twenty years and has lived for five years in Eastern Africa and six years in Southeast Asia. She is currently based in Portugal where she works as a consultant for UNICEF and various non-profits and businesses, focusing on child online protection, and data governance for children. Emma is a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council Digital Forensics Research Lab.

Dr Rys Farthing is the Director of Data Policy at Reset Australia where she has led on the campaign for a Children's Code in Australia. She works on realising children and young people’s rights in the digital world through policy and regulation. She has worked as an academic, not-for-profits and at think tanks based in Australia, the UK and US, including 5Rights Foundation and Fairplay.

Associate Professor Cathrine Neilsen-Hewett is the Academic Director of the Early Years, University of Wollongong. She has demonstrated leadership and scholarship in translational research with a strong track record in supporting professional development initiatives across the early childhood education sector. She has co-led six large-scale Early Start research projects across 3 Australian states, in over 450 ECEC services, with more than 3500 children. Her current research projects focus on children’s self-regulation and wellbeing, quality early childhood environments and workforce development (including links between digital technologies and educator practice), integrated early childhood service platforms, and approaches to early childhood assessment.

For more information regarding this event, please contact Loretta Watson at loretta.watson@deakin.edu.au