Valentina Andries
Postdoctoral Research Associate – Secret Lives of Children’s Digital Monies
Valentina Andries, Postdoctoral Research Associate – Secret Lives of Children’s Digital Monies
Valentina Andries is currently working as a researcher on a project exploring the “Secret Lives of Children’s Digital Monies”. This mapping project is led by Dr Cara Wilson and Dr Chris Elsden, and it is a collaboration between the University of Edinburgh and NatWest banking Group. The aim is to explore how children and families currently interact with (digital) money, and what children envisage the future of money could look like, through participatory design approaches.
Valentina’s previous research at the University of Oxford entailed exploring the relationships between the use of educational technologies in secondary-schools in England and matters of equity in education. There, she worked in a team with Professor Rebecca Eynon, and she employed an ethnographic approach to conduct the research.
As a Postdoctoral Researcher, Valentina also worked on a project aimed at exploring young children’s perceptions of conversational assistants (such as Amazon’s Alexa) and artificial intelligence (AI). Together with Professor Judy Robertson from the University of Edinburgh, she conducted a mixed-methods study with primary-school children in Scotland to understand their awareness and how they interact with such systems.
Valentina studied towards a PhD in Education and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) at the University of Edinburgh, under the supervision of Professors Judy Robertson and Lydia Plowman. Her PhD was focused on ethically designing and evaluating digital technology, aimed at supporting young children’s play in a hospital setting.
From a teaching perspective, she has been involved in planning and running research methods and HCI courses at MSc level at the School of Informatics.
Valentina’s research interests largely lie at the intersection of education and HCI: educational technology, participatory approaches, inclusive design and evaluation of technology, ethics in technology design, AI in education, AI ethics.