Dr. Jessica Taylor Piotrowski is a Professor in the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) where she holds the Chair Communication in the Digital Society. Dr. Piotrowski’s research asks how individual and socio-cultural differences influence children’s media selection, use, processing, and subsequent effects, with a particular focus on the contexts that support young people’s experiences with digital media. Presently, she is asking how young people (and their network of peers, teachers, (grand)parents, etc.) are learning to cope with the digital society - particularly through the lends of digital competence: a concept that represents both the digital skills and digital knowledge necessary for benefiting from today’s digital world. 

Dr. Mitra Shamsi is a researcher at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) in Bochum, Germany, working on digital feminist activism in Iran. She holds a PhD in Media and Communication Studies from the University of Tehran, Iran. Her research lies at the intersection of political communication and feminist media studies, examining the mediation of women’s activism and contemporary gendered debates in Iran. She is particularly interested in the generation and circulation of feminist narratives by Iranian feminists and women’s rights campaigners, with a special focus on digital feminist discourses. Before joining the CAIS, she held a research and development position at the Iranian Research Institute for Information Science and Technology (IranDoc).