Digital Youth x MindTech Conference – Digital risk, resilience and interventions: co-creating change in youth mental health

Chris Hollis is the Director of MindTech, Professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry and Digital Mental Health at the University of Nottingham, and Consultant in Developmental Neuropsychiatry with Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust.

His main areas of interest include ADHD, Tourette syndrome, neurodevelopmental disorders and the development, evaluation and implementation of digital technologies in mental healthcare. Chris was a member of the NICE ADHD Guideline committee and NICE Diagnostic Guidance committee (DG60) ‘Digital technologies for assessing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)’. He is co-chief investigator on the UKRI funded Digital Youth programme, exploring digital risk, resilience and interventions for youth mental health.

He is currently leading the NIHR-funded ORBIT study, which is evaluating and implementing a remote digital intervention for children and young people with tics and Tourette syndrome.

A former President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health from 2012-2015, Dr Cass was appointed by NHS England to chair the Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for children and young people, which was published in April 2024.

Her previous clinical role was as a tertiary neurodisability consultant. She also held a range of senior education and management roles throughout her career, and was closely involved in the development of paediatric palliative care services at Evelina London Children’s Hospital. After retiring from clinical practice, she established a group leading work on how to address the challenges for both families and professionals in supporting the rising numbers of children with complex medical conditions and disability.

She was awarded the OBE for services to child health in 2015. In 2024 she was nominated for a life peerage and was created Baroness Cass on 22 August 2024.

Sonia Livingstone OBE FBA is a professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. She has published 21 books on media audiences, children and young people’s risks and opportunities, media literacy and rights in the digital environment, including “Parenting for a Digital Future: How hopes and fears about technology shape children’s lives”and Digital Media Use in Early Childhood: Birth to Six. Since founding the EC-funded “EU Kids Online” research network, and Global Kids Online (with UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti), she has advised the Council of Europe, European Commission, European Parliament, UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, OECD, ITU and UNICEF. She works on the MRC-funded DIORA project (Dynamic Interplay of Online Risk and Resilience in Adolescence) and ESRC-funded PlatFAMs (Platforming Families) project, and is currently leading the Digital Futures for Children centre at LSE with the 5Rights Foundation. Visit Sonia’s website

Professor of Developmental Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience, Kings College London.

Honorary Skou Professor, Aarhus University, Denmark.

Visiting Research Professor, University of Hong Kong

Edmund is a developmental psychologist who studies the causes, course and developmental consequences of mental health and neuro-developmental conditions. Motivated by his own childhood experience of learning and behaviour difficulties, he has devoted his research career to improving the life chances of young people, especially those with neurodevelopmental conditions, such as ADHD. To this end he has developed new ways of thinking about and studying neurodevelopment using experimental developmental neuroscience methods and theories.

Edmund is an elected Fellow of The Academy of Medical Sciences (2016), The British Academy (2018),The Danish Academy of Honorary Skou Professors (2019) and a Member of the Academia Europea (2023). He is Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Edmund is a Roman Catholic husband and father, cigar evangelist, soul music aficionado & lifelong Derby County fan (:(). He is the proud current holder of the Digital Youth Mover & Shaker Award for his dancing.

Cathy Creswell is Professor of Developmental Clinical Psychology at the University of Oxford, an Honorary Consultant Clinical Psychologist in Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, an NIHR Senior Investigator and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Director of the new Oxford Centre for Emerging Minds Research which conducts research that aims to contributes to a world where differences between people are understood and accepted, strengths are capitalised on, and mental health difficulties are prevented or addressed early. Her research particularly focuses on the development, maintenance, and treatment of common mental health problems in children. In recent years this has included the co-development, evaluation, and implementation of digitally-augmented, therapist-supported, brief parent-led interventions for anxiety and related problems in children.

Dr Amy Orben

Programme Leader

MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit

University of Cambridge

Professor Amy Orben is a Research Professor at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and Fellow of St. John’s College at the University of Cambridge. She leads an internationally recognised research programme investigating the links between mental health and digital technology use in adolescence. She routinely advises policymakers and public servants around the world, for example as Director of a 2025 UK Government independent research commission on this topic and as a member of the Science Advisory Council at the UK Department for Education. Professor Orben completed her DPhil in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford and MA in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge. She has received a range of prestigious awards including the Association for Psychological Science Rising Star Award (2024), Medical Research Council Early Career Impact Prize (2022) and the British Psychological Society Award for Outstanding Contributions to Doctoral Research (2019). She also received the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science Mission Award (2020) for her work to improve scientific practice and research culture in her field.

Dr A. Jess Williams is a Lecturer of Suicide Prevention Epidemiology at Swansea University, National Centre for Suicide Prevention and Self-Harm Research. She completed her postdoctoral position at King’s College London working with Dr Slovak, on the Digital Youth project. Jess’s work focuses on the experiences of LGBTQ+ young people who self-harm, with a particular interest in intervention design and deployment.