The Think Tank is composed of several members, including three guest members per online meeting.

• act as an advisory body on the project,
• act as ambassadors to the project,  by promoting the work done within ENABLE but at the same time making their own work known to a broader audience,
• peer review research approaches of guests to ensure that 1) the project builds a comprehensive compendium of data sheets on tested anti-bullying approaches; 2) the project is shaped by emerging research, and
• attract public attention to the project by already being well known in their field. 

Think Tank Members

• David Finkelhor, Crimes against Children Research Center, USA
• Marc Brackett, Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, USA
• Sonia Livingstone, EU KidsOnline, UK
• Jasmina Byrne, UNICEF, Serbia
• Donna Cross, Telethon Kids Institute, Australia
• Martin Schmalzried, COFACE, Czech Republic
• Susan Flocken, ETUCE, Belgium
• Sonia Seixas, Educação do Instituto Politécnico de Santarém, Portugal
• Alessandro Bencivenni, ProfDigitale, Italy
• Robertas Povilaitis, Child Line, Lithuania
   

David Finkelhor is the Director of the Crimes against Children Research Center, Co-Director of the Family Research Laboratory and Professor of Sociology at the University of New Hampshire. He has been studying the problems of child victimization, child maltreatment and family violence since 1977. He is well known for his conceptual and empirical work on the problem of child sexual abuse, reflected in publications such as Sourcebook on Child Sexual Abuse (Sage, 1986) and Nursery Crimes (Sage, 1988).

 

Marc Brackett, Ph.D., is director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. He is also a senior research scientist in psychology and faculty fellow in the Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy at Yale University. He co-created RULER and has developed two university courses on emotional intelligence.

 

Marc is a recipient of the Joseph E. Zins Award for his research on social and emotional learning. His grant-funded research focuses on (1) the role of emotional intelligence in learning, decision making, relationship quality, and mental health, (2) the measurement of emotional intelligence, and (3) the influences of emotional intelligence training on student and educator effectiveness, bullying prevention, and school climate. Marc also is working with Facebook on a large-scale research project designed to both prevent and decrease online bullying. He is the author of 100 scholarly publications.

 

Marc serves on numerous research advisory boards, including CASEL, Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation, and the Greater Good Science Center. He regularly delivers keynote addresses, consults with school systems on integrating RULER, and works with corporations on best practices for incorporating emotional intelligence. He also holds a 5th degree black belt in Hapkido, a Korean martial art.

Sonia Livingstone OBE is a full professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. She is author or editor of eighteen books, including Children and the Internet: Great Expectations, Challenging Realities (Polity 2009), Harm and Offence in Media Content: A review of the empirical literature (with Andrea Millwood Hargrave, Intellect 2009), Media Regulation: Governance and the interests of citizens and consumers (with Peter Lunt, Sage 2012); Children, Risk and Safety Online: Research and policy challenges in comparative perspective (edited with Leslie Haddon and Anke Görzig, Policy 2012) and Digital Technologies in the Lives of Young People (edited with Chris Davies and John Coleman, Routledge 2014). 

She directs the 33-country network, EU Kids Online, funded by the EC's Safer Internet Programme (see www.eukidsonline.net) and serves on the Executive Board of the UK's Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS), for which she is the Evidence Champion.

Jasmina Byrne is a senior researcher working in UNICEF Office of Research - Innocenti, Florence, Italy.  She leads UNICEF Office of Research’s work on children and the internet and have overseen and contributed to several UNICEF studies related to child safety online, cyberbullying and child rights on the internet (www. unicef-irc.org). In addition, she is responsible for developing and leading UNICEF’s global research agenda on family and parenting support.

 

Prior to joining Innocenti, Jasmina was head of UNICEF child protection programme in Indonesia. She has more than 15 years of international experience in managing complex child rights and protection programmes, including research, policy development, programme design and evaluation in South East Asia, Europe and Southern Africa with UNICEF, Save the Children. International Committee of the Red Cross and UN Women. 

Donna Cross is a Winthrop Professor with the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University of Western Australia and the Australian Telethon Kids Institute. Donna has been awarded over $13m in competitive grants addressing child and adolescent health promotion. This funding has supported 52 applied research intervention projects investigating school and community-based interventions to enhance the social and emotional development and reduce bullying (including cyberbullying) and aggression among children and adolescents.

She currently leads seven 3-5 year research projects that aim to enhance social competence, and prevent and or manage all forms of bullying, cyberbullying and associated mental health harms among children and adolescents. She was an invited management committee member of the COST Action IS0801 Cyberbullying: Coping with negative and enhancing positive uses of new technologies, in relationships in educational settings.  In 2012, Donna received the award for Western Australian, ‘Australian of the Year’ for her services to children’s health.

Martin Schmalzried holds a Master’s Degree from the ULB (Brussels) in Political Science and is a licensed sociology teacher in upper secondary education. He has been working at COFACE (Confederation of Family Organisations in the EU) as a Policy Officer for over five years. His areas of expertise include safer internet and new technologies. He has been involved in a number of EU projects and initiatives linked with safer internet issues. 

Susan Flocken has been working for the European Trade Union for Education (ETUCE) in Brussels since 2009. As Coordinator for Internal Policy Coordination and Occupational Health & Safety, Ms Flocken is responsible amongst others for managing projects in the field of Working Conditions and Health and Safety at the workplace, such as the prevention of violence at school and the prevention of teachers’ work-related stress. In her work she supports the application of the ETUCE Action Plans on the prevention of work-related stress and on the prevention of violence against teachers which address teachers, school leadership, teacher education institutions, teacher unions, national and local authorities, the Euorpean Commission and ETUCE. She also supports the Implementation Guide for the Education Sector of the Multi-Sectoral Guidelines to Tackle Third-Party Violence and Harassment Related to Work agreed upon by the European social partners ETUCE and EFEE.

The European Trade Union Committee for Education (ETUCE) represents 131 Teacher Unions and 11 million teachers in all countries of Europe, 4.2 million teachers in the EU, from all levels of the education sector. ETUCE is a Social Partner in education at the EU level and a European Trade Union Federation within ETUC, the European Trade Union Confederation. ETUCE is the European Region of Education International, the global federation of teacher unions.

Alessandro Bencivenni is an high school teacher in Tuscany, Italy. He is also a blogger: the focus on his blog, www.profdigitale.com, is on how digital technologies can be employed to transform learning in high schools; moreover he shares information about free resources that teachers can use in their  classrooms. In 2014 ProfDigitale.com has been nominated for the Best Italian Educational Blog in Macchianera Awards. As a social media enthusiast, he uses Twitter and Facebook to share important news about ed-tech, and help other teacher stay motivated and connect with other teachers.

 

As a teacher trainer he focuses on innovation and on Digital Citizenship awareness. In the last four years he organised many workshops for young people and parents on cyberbullying, privacy and web reputation.  He is also a frequent presenter at conferences.

 

Alessandro is a CoderDojo Champion: with CoderDojo he helps kids to learn how to code, develop websites, apps, programs, games and explore technology.