Academy Fellow

Professor Susan Danby is one of Australia’s leading experts in early years language and social interaction, childhood studies, and young children’s engagement with digital technologies. As Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child, Susan leads a collective of national and international researchers and partners across government, business and the community to work towards the Centre’s vision – ensuring young children are healthy, connected and educated in a rapidly changing digital age.

Susan’s research career has been driven by this same vision and cross-disciplinary approach. Her research explores the everyday social and interactional practices of children, investigating their complex and competent work as they build their social worlds. Susan was an ARC Future Fellow (2012-2017) and has led three ARC Discovery Projects. She was a member of the ARC College of Experts (2016-2017) and the Early Childhood Australia Digital Policy Group. In 2019, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Uppsala University (Sweden) for her international contribution to child studies, and studies of children and digital technologies.

Director, Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child

2016 – 2018 Australian Research Council College of Experts

2012 – 2017 Australian Research Council Future Fellow

1. Houen, Sandy, Danby, Susan, & Miller, Pernilla (2021) Siblings accomplishing tasks together:Solicited and unsolicited assistance when using digital technology. In Green, Lelia, Holloway, Donell, Stevenson, Kylie, Leaver, Tama, & Haddon, Leslie (Eds.) The Routledge Companion to Digital Media and Children. Routledge, New York, NY, pp. 130-143.
2. Davidson, Christina, Danby, Susan, Ekberg, Stuart, & Thorpe, Karen (2020) The interactional achievement of reading aloud by young children and parents during digital technology use. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy.
3. Danby, Susan (2020) New texts, new kids, new ways of thinking: Engaging young children with digital texts in the home. In Woods, Annette & Exley, Beryl (Eds.) Literacies in early childhood: Foundations for equity and quality. Oxford University Press, Australia.
4. Theobald, Maryanne, McFadden, Amanda, Lunn, Joanne, Smeaton, Kathleen, Nielson, Cathy, Radanovic, Shelley, et al. (2020) Research in Brief: Digital Play in Early Childhood Education:Supporting Children's Relational Information Literacy. Queensland University of Technology, Australia.
5. Danby, Susan & Davidson, Christina (2020) Webs of relationships: Young children's engagement with Web searching. In Erstad, O, Flewitt, R, Kummerling-Meibauer, B, & Pereira I.S., Pires (Eds.) The Routledge handbook of digital literacies in early childhood (Routledge International Handbooks of Education). Routledge, United Kingdom, pp. 402-415.