Keynote Speakers

Read the biographies and abstracts of our keynotes:

Stephen Thornton
Jane Secker
Elinor Carmi

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).

Light at the end of the tunnel? Twenty Years of Information Literacy in the Politics Classroom

Looking back over some of my earliest articles in which I described attempts to embed information literacy into a Politics classroom at a UK university, I discovered – with some alarm – that I’ve been doing this for two decades. One yellowing report outlines a small pilot study conducted back in February 2005, where, for the first time, I knowingly dipped my toe into your world. I did this through organising – in collaboration with a very patient information specialist – a small third-year undergraduate workshop which took the issue of the UK government’s response to the foot-and-mouth crisis (remember that?) as the focus around which to explore the reliability of various sources. The hot topic back then was the dependability of Wikipedia. Happy days.

This was just the start of many such adventures, and this talk provides an excellent opportunity to take stock of two decades’ worth of attempts to get the discipline of Politics and International Relations to take information literacy seriously. As I will explain, despite the support of some fantastic colleagues along the way, the discipline paid little heed to me, nor the many others making similar points. However, recent developments suggest that may be changing – at last.

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.

Reflecting on Information Literacy: Lessons from a Lifelong Advocate

In this keynote, I will reflect on information literacy teaching and research over the past 25 years that I have been working in higher education. I am a passionate advocate for information literacy, as a founding member of the CILIP Information Literacy Group and a co-founder of LILAC over 20 years ago. I’ll discuss some of what motivated me to help establish the IL community. I helped to re-write the CILIP (2018) definition of IL, inspired by UNESCO’s Alexandria Proclamation of IL that positions it as the cornerstone of lifelong learning and a fundamental human right (IFLA, 2006). Like Paul Zurkowski (1974), I believe in the importance of ‘universal information literacy’ to empower people in their work and in their daily lives, however achieving this in 2025 sometimes seems harder than ever. In all my work, collaborating and sharing ideas with colleagues has been central though, we can’t do it alone, and to paraphrase the words often attributed to Isaac Newton from 1675, it’s only by standing on the shoulders of giants that we can see further.

In the keynote I will share a series of lessons about information literacy, each illustrated by a cultural reference which include the words of a great scientist, the titles of songs or films that I love. Making learning engaging is the heart of what I try and do and so using this playful approach I hope to make some serious points. I will also draw on my experiences of running projects, undertaking research and more recently of trying to teach staff about information and digital literacy from both a practical and theoretical perspective. And it wouldn’t be a keynote by me without me mentioning the importance of copyright!

The premise that all you need are ten lessons or ‘life hacks’ to understand how to be a teaching librarian or a researcher in information literacy comes from the likes of BuzzFeed. However, one thing that working in the field of information teaches us is that there are never just ten things you need to know about anything, there are always competing ideas and new research emerging. One must always take a critical approach to identify misinformation, fake news or over generalisations and simplifications of what are often highly complex issues. And as more content is created, increasingly by AI, there has never been a more important need for information literacy for everyone in their daily lives. But how on earth do we instil critical thinking in people at all stages of their life? I’ll share some thoughts about what actually works and has impact on people’s lives.

Given my origins as a historian, I’ll return to the idea that we need to stand on the shoulders of giants in the IL field and use evidence to inform our approach. We also need to reflect on where IL comes from so that we can make progress. If you continue to work in this field, the one thing you need to remember is nothing stands still, you will always need to keep learning, and you will never get to a state of being what Zurkowski called the ‘information literati’. But this is work that can make a difference and maybe change lives, as education is supposed to do, so I urge you never to give up trying!

References

CILIP (2018) Definition of Information Literacy. Available at: https://www.cilip.org.uk/news/421972/what-is-information-literacy.htm

IFLA (2006) High-Level Colloquium on Information Literacy and Lifelong Learning Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt November 6-9, 2005. Report of a meeting by Sarah Devotion Garner. Available at: https://www.ifla.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/assets/information-literacy/publications/high-level-colloquium-2005.pdf

Zurkowski, P (1974) The Information Service Environment: Relationships and Priorities. Washington D.C.: National Commission on Libraries and Information Science.

Elinor Carmi

Biography

Dr. Elinor Carmi is a digital rights advocate, feminist, researcher and journalist who has been working on data politics, data literacies, data feminism, data justice and internet governance. In the past five years she has successfully won grants from UKRI, ESRC, and Nuffield Foundation together with colleagues from academia and NGOs. Dr. Carmi's work contributes to emerging debates in academia, policy, health organizations and digital activism. In February 2020, Elinor was invited to give evidence on digital literacy for the House of Lords Committee on Democracy and Digital Technologies. Her insights were included in the final report: “Digital Technology and the Resurrection of Trust”. In July 2020, Dr. Carmi was invited by the World Health Organization as an expert on data literacy and disinformation to the first scientific discussion on infodemiology. Between 2021-2023 Elinor won a Parliamentary Academic Fellowship working with the UK's Digital, Culture, Media & Sport Committee, and from May 2024 she has been selected to be an Expert Member of the UK Information Commissioner's Office Technology Advisory Panel. She has been invited to be an expert advisor for several organisations and digital rights NGOs such as: Amnesty International Tech, International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), UNESCO, Connected by Data, Demos, 5 Rights, Royal Society, and the Norwegian Consumer Ombudsman.

Data Citizenship: Learning to take action in the datafied society

This talk explores what literacies people need to challenge Big-Tech companies. People have become more aware of power imbalances, specifically regarding the ways Big Technology companies (referring to organizations such as Facebook/Meta, Amazon, Apple, Google/Alphabet) use and abuse their data. However, while people get glimpses of the harms these companies cause through the media, many feel powerless against them, and therefore the awareness does not always translate into action. In this talk I will examine how awareness can be transformed into meaningful action. I draw on the Data Citizenship framework I developed with colleagues from Liverpool University that looks beyond functional actions and understanding and aims to equip people with civic knowledge about their data rights and participatory practices in the datafied society.