Dr Claire Bessant is an Associate Professor at Northumbria University Law School. She is also a fellow of the civil society organisation Connected by Data. Claire’s research explores the impact of technology upon children’s privacy. Drawing upon expertise in family law, privacy and data protection, she is particularly interested in exploring how parents exercise their privacy stewardship role and how children can best be supported to understand and express views on how their data is used. Claire has written extensively on the sharing of children’s images on social media, by parents and schools.
Beatrice is a dual qualified lawyer specialised in data protection and children's online safety.
With past experiences ranging from SMEs to tech giants and European supervisory authorities, she uses her regulatory, policy, and in-house legal experience to advise digital businesses on their data protection challenges and building privacy programmes that scale.
Ellie is a final-year PhD researcher at the University of Nottingham’s School of Law and the EPSRC Horizon Centre for Doctoral Training. She conducts multidisciplinary research that integrates methods and insights from both law and computer science to explore how laws governing technology affect end users. Her expertise encompasses the broad field of online safety laws and regulations, particularly in user-generated content moderation. Her current project evaluates the appropriateness of the UK’s Online Safety Act 2023, considering the lived experiences of young people with legal but harmful content online.
Colette Collins-Walsh is Head of UK Affairs at 5Rights which advocates for the consideration of children’s rights and needs in the design and deployment of digital products and services. 5Rights work is informed by the UN General Comment No. 25 on children’s rights in the digital environment, for which it chaired the Steering Committee, and its activities span across advocacy, compliance, youth engagement and research. In the UK, 5Rights developed and made the case for the Age Appropriate Design Code which has driven the biggest design changes in tech since GDPR and successfully campaigned for ground breaking protections for children in the Online Safety Act. Colette has extensive political and government experience, having worked in the Department for Education, House of Commons, as well as for the strategic advisory firm Hanbury Strategy.
Jane regularly advises companies on innovative and frontier technologies that rely on the process of biometric data. These projects often involve grey zone areas where there is a heightened privacy risk, where Jane helps companies make strategic decisions. She also advises on the use of data in the provision of consumer and business products, including on issues relating to repurposing of data, profiling, AI, ad-tech and direct marketing and on a wide range of other data protection issues such as data subject requests, data security breaches, data protection investigations, cross border data transfers, transfers of data to overseas regulators, customer relationship management, employee monitoring, data protection policies and procedures and website compliance issues.
Stewart graduated from the University of Lancaster in Politics and Marketing. In 1975 Stewart initiated research on Open Government at the UK Consumers’ Association. He then made an independent trip to the USA and Canada, meeting consumer advocates, politicians and journalists researching Freedom of Information (FoI) and privacy legislation. He had articles published in The Geographical Magazine, in 1977 on the use of the FoI Act by the Navajo Tribe of Arizona, and The Times in 1978 on the use of the FoI Act to improve car safety. In May 1980, the Outer Circle Policy Unit published his Open Government: Lessons from America. His career included consumer research and working for The Economist as a business journalist where he wrote occasionally on privacy laws and honed his skills as an investigator and writer.
He launched the Privacy Laws & Business Newsletter in February 1987. In October 1988 he organised PL&B’s first international conference. Stewart co-founded and chaired the UK’s Data Protection Forum, and has spoken at conferences around the world. He lives and works in Pinner, has a beautiful wife, who wrote this, and 3 adult sons.