Keynote Speakers

Jane Secker

Biography

Jane Secker is Associate Professor in Educational Development at City St George’s, University of London where she leads the modules related to digital education and digital literacies and is joint Programme Director of the Masters in Academic Practice. She is the former Chair of the CILIP Information Literacy Group, a co-founder of LILAC and now serving as Deputy Chair of the ILG. She is founder member and a trustee of the Media and Information Literacy Alliance (MILA) and created a framework for information literacy known as a New Curriculum for Information Literacy (ANCIL) in 2011 working with Emma Coonan. Her current research is exploring staff attitudes towards digital literacies and open educational practices, copyright anxiety in higher education and why staff engage in playful learning.

Jane was Copyright and Digital Literacy Advisor at LSE for over 15 years where she advised staff about copyright issues and the online environment. She is a member of the Universities UK Copyright Negotiation and Advisory Committee which negotiates with the Copyright Licensing Agency on the higher education licence. She is co-author of Copyright and E-learning: a guide for practitioners published by Facet in 2016. She has created a number of open educational games for teaching about copyright, collaborating with Chris Morrison for over 10 years. She also runs the podcast Copyright Waffle with Chris and has a PhD from Aberystwyth University. You might think Jane is a very serious person but in fact in her spare time she is a passionate gardener and is learning the guitar. She also enjoys playing with her cats and dressing up in historical costumes.

Stephen Thornton

Biography

Dr Stephen Thornton is Reader in Politics at Cardiff University. Though he mainly teaches and researches on aspects of British political history and public policy, Stephen also has a long-standing interest in the information behaviours of Politics and International Relations students and, over two decades, has written many articles on the topic. His latest piece - co-written with Dr Doug Atkinson - is called ‘Everywhere and Nowhere: Information Literacy in the Political Science Classroom’ (in the US journal PS: Political Science and Politics). Stephen is also a Senior Fellow of Advance HE (formerly the Higher Education Academy).