Professor Julia Davidson OBE, PhD (LSE) is Director of the Institute of Connected Communities. She is recognised internationally as one of the foremost experts on policy, practice and offending in the area of cybercrime, online harms and online child abuse.

She is Chair of the UK Council for Internet Safety Evidence Group reporting directly to ministers and provides expert advice to national and international organisations such as NICE, the Home Office, the National Crime Agency, UNICEF, Europol, the US Sentencing Commission, the US Department of Justice and the UN ITU.

She is Chair of the Ethics Committee of the UK Independent Inquiry into CSA and is a member of the Europol EC3 Expert Academic Advisory Group and has worked with Interpol. Professor Davidson has worked with the media since 2003, working on live and recorded interviews for the BBC News, BBC World News, ITV, Channel 4, BBC, Radio 4 News, BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour. She has also worked on documentaries and has published widely in the cybercrime and child internet safety area, she has written 5 books and many academic articles.

She has a PhD in Criminal Justice Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science and was made Honorary Research Fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London in May 2010 and has been Adjunct Professor in the School of Law at QUT, Australia. She is a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy. Prof Davidson has also acted as an advisor on online safety to Governments and practitioners in South America, Africa and the MENA region since 2009, recently helping the Kingdom of Bahrain (2016) and the Rwandan government (in collaboration with Baroness Kidron/5Rights - 2019) to develop a national child Internet Safety Policy Framework. She was awarded an OBE for services to internet safety in 2020.