Since the domestication of the Internet in the late 1990s, the risks and opportunities for children of new digital technologies have become a constant focus for public and policy debate. Many of the issues raised are familiar - harmful content, anti-social behaviour - but others, such as the opportunities for the datafication and monitoring of children’s lives - are new and less well understood. With the rapid adoption of generative AI in family life and education systems, the debate is shifting again. What balance of opportunities and challenges will AI tools offer for children and how are societal expectations of childhood changing as a result? Drawing on research from the Oxford Internet Institute and the wider social science field, this lecture provides an opportunity to review the major technological shifts of the past three decades and to reassess how such shifts are shaping what it means to have a good childhood in the digital age.
When?
May 20, 2025
4:15 pm
-
6:00 pm
Where?
Room D.0.01, Bildungscampus 2, 74076 Heilbronn
Who?
TUM Campus Heilbronn
Your Speaker
Oxford Internet Institute
Prof. Victoria Nash
Vicki Nash is Director, Associate Professor and Senior Policy Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) at the University of Oxford. Drawing on her background as a political theorist, her research centres on the governance challenges of digital technologies, with a particular focus on online safety, content moderation and platform regulation. Recent research has included an analysis of age verification policies as a tool for balancing the interests of children and adults online, and an analysis of the UK Online Safety Act. She holds several digital policy advisory roles, including membership of the UK Government’s multi-stakeholder UK Council on Internet Safety (UKCIS) Evidence Group, and the World Economic Forum’s Digital Safety Coalition. She is frequently called on to give expert evidence in UK and EU policy consultations on broader issues such as platform governance and Internet regulation.
Prior to joining the OII in 2002, Vicki was a Research Fellow at the Institute of Public Policy Research. She received her D.Phil in Politics from Nuffield College, Oxford University in 1999, having completed an M.Phil in Politics from Magdalen College in 1996, and a BA (Hons) Degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics before this.
Your Host
TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology
Prof. Dr. Alexander Fraser
Alexander Fraser leads the Chair for Data Analytics & Statistics at the Technical University of Munich. He is also a PI of the Munich Center for Machine Learning, a Core Member of the Munich Data Science Institute and a member of ELLIS Munich. Previously he was a full professor at the Center for Information and Language Processing, LMU Munich, where he led the Multilingual Natural Language Processing and Machine Translation Group. Before that, he led the Machine Translation Group at the Institute for Natural Language Processing at the University of Stuttgart.
He has received three European Research Council grants and was a PI of the Horizon 2020 "Health in my Language" project. His main research interests are in representation learning and machine learning approaches to natural language processing.
Alex obtained his PhD in 2007 from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California. His PhD research was conducted at the Information Sciences Institute in the Intelligent Systems Division. In addition to his academic work, Alex has worked at Language Weaver, where he developed the first commercially-available statistical machine translation system, and at BBN Technologies, where he worked on Arabic monolingual and cross-language information retrieval. Before starting his PhD studies, Alex held a number of positions including technical director at SatelLife/HealthNet, working on digital infrastructure for health information in developing countries.
Directions
Getting Here by Train & Bus
- By city bus to "Europaplatz/Bildungscampus West" stop (approx. 100m on foot to AULA)
- By city train S41/S42 to "Theater" stop (approx. 700m on foot to AULA)
If you arrive via train at Heilbronn central station, you can take the city train S41/S42 to Theater and walk approx. 700m or the bus lines 1 and 5 to "Harmonie" stop and change into the bus lines 5, 31, 32, 41 or 42 and exit at "Europaplatz/Bildungscampus West".
Getting Here by Car
We recommend using the "Parkhaus Ost" located at Dammstraße 1, 74076 Heilbronn.
Another parking garage "Parkhaus Mitte" and parking spaces are located at Weipertstraße 51, 74076 Heilbronn.