Conference speakers

Dr Sarah Blunden

Dr Sarah Blunden, clinical psychologist (BA Psychology Honours, MSocSc, PhD, MAPS), is the founder and director the Australian Centre for Education in Sleep and the Paediatric Sleep Clinic. She also holds a post doctoral research role at the University of South Australia in Paediatric Sleep. Dr Blunden has spent the past 10 years researching, treating and lecturing on children's sleep both nationally and internationally, as well as delivering education and information sessions to the community, educators and health care professionals. Dr Blunden is recognised as an authority on children's sleep and is widely published in the field with over 60 peer reviewed papers and conference presentations. She is a member of:

Professor Ed Donnerstein is Dean of the College of Social & Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona. His major research interests are in mass media violence, as well as mass media policy. He has published over 200 scientific articles in these areas and serves on the editorial boards of a number of academic journals in both psychology and communication. He was a member of the American Psychological Association's Commission on Violence and Youth, and the APA's Task Force on Television and Society. He recently served on a new Surgeon General's panel on youth violence. He currently serves on the Advisory Council of the American Medical Association Alliance's violence prevention program.

Richard Eckersley

Richard Eckersley is a founding director of Australia 21, an independent, non-profit, research company, and a visiting fellow at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University, Canberra. His research explores progress and wellbeing, and includes: measures of national progress; the relationships between economic growth, quality of life and sustainability; the social and cultural determinants of health and happiness; visions of the future; and young people and their world. He trained as a zoologist and has worked as a science journalist, policy and issue analyst and futurist. He has held senior positions with CSIRO, the Commission for the Future and the Australian Government.

Professor Douglas Gentile

Dr. Douglas Gentile is a research scientist, author, award-winning educator, and is an associate professor of developmental psychology at Iowa State University. His experience includes over 20 years conducting research with children and adults. He is the editor of the book Media Violence and Children (2003, Praeger Press), and co-author of the book Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents: Theory, Research, and Public Policy (2007, Oxford University Press).  He has authored over 30 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles, including studies on the positive and negative effects of video games on children in several countries, the validity of the American media ratings, how screen time contributes to youth obesity, and what is being called video game and Internet "addiction."

Dr. Gentile runs the Media Research Lab at Iowa State University where he conducts research on media's impact on children and adults. As the leader of this effort, Dr. Gentile develops and conducts research projects designed to give parents and other caregivers the kind of information they need and want to make informed media chioces for their children. 

Professor Elizabeth Handsley

Professor Elizabeth Handsley has degrees in law and French from the University of New South Wales and a postgraduate degree in law from Northwestern University. She teaches constitutional law and media law at Flinders University, where she has worked since 1996. She has taught also at law schools in NSW and Perth, and her teaching areas have included tort law and feminist legal theory.

Professor Handsley has researched and published on food advertising regulation; internet regulation; and the implications of digital television for children. She is the co-convenor of the Harvard-Australia Symposium on Media Use and Children’s Well-Being. Most recently she has been closely involved in the R18+ computer games debate, having served on the representative panel at the December 2010 meeting of the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General, written opinion pieces and given numerous media interviews on the subject.

Since October 2010 she has been the President of the Australian Council on Children and the Media, having been active in that organisation for more than 10 years, and a regular contributor to submissions and media interviews on its behalf.

Professor Alan Hayes

Professor Alan Hayes is the Director of the Australian Institute of Family Studies, taking up his appointment in September 2004. He also holds a professorial appointment at Macquarie University. He is currently a member of the Family Law System Reference Group, the Chief Justice’s Family Law Forum, the Australian Government’s Longitudinal Studies Advisory Group (LSAG), the Work and Family Roundtable, an inaugural member of the APS200 Leadership Forum and a member of the National Advisory Board recently established by the Family Law Section of the Law Council of Australia.

He has research and policy interests in the pathways children and their families take through life, and the role of families in supporting and sustaining development across life, from infancy and early childhood. Much of his work has focused on disadvantage, with a longstanding interest in prevention and early intervention. The impact of relationship breakdown on children is a particular interest.

Professor John P Murray

John P. Murray, Ph.D. is a Research Fellow in the Department of Psychology at Washington College; an Emeritus Professor of Developmental Psychology in the School of Family Studies and Human Services at Kansas State University; and a Visiting Scholar in the Center on Media and Child Health at Children’s Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School.

He has conducted research on children’s social development for almost 40 years—starting in 1969 as a Research Coordinator for the Surgeon General’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior at the National Institute of Mental Health, in Washington.  Subsequent appointments included teaching and research at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia; University of Michigan; the Boys Town Center for the Study of Youth Development; and Kansas State University.

His recent research projects are focused on children and violence and include studies mapping children’s brain activations— using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)—while the youngsters view violent and nonviolent videos, and studies of youth growing up in war zones and conflict areas.

Dr. Murray has published 14 books and about 90 articles on the social development of children and youth..  His recent book—Children and Television: Fifty Years of Research (Norma O. Pecora, John P. Murray, & Ellen A.Wartella, Editors)—was published by Erlbaum Publishers in 2007.  His recent article is “Thoughtless Vigilantes: Media Violence and Brain Activation Patterns in Young Viewers” to be published by Wiley-Blackwell in 2011.

Dr Wayne Warburton
Dr Wayne Warburton is a lecturer in developmental psychology with the Department of Psychology and is the Deputy Director of the Children and Families Research Centre at Macquarie University (Sydney).

Wayne is also a registered psychologist, and represents the interests of consumers as a member of the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman’s governing council. He has a number of publications in scientific journals and books, primarily on topics around aggressive behaviour. Wayne is currently researching the development of aggressive thought patterns in children from violent homes, the thought processes underlying domestic violence and child abuse, the pro-social and anti-social effects of various media, and the comparative effects of violent music and violent visual media.