Robin Mansell

Robin Mansell is Professor of New Media and the Internet and Head of the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is internationally known for her work on the social, economic, and technical issues arising from new technologies, especially in the computer and telecommunication industries. She has examined the integration of new technologies into society, the interaction between engineering design and the structure of markets, and the sources of regulatory effectiveness and failure. Her current research is devoted to understanding interactions between electronic and social networks in the creation and distribution of knowledge. She has contributed to policy discussion and formulation concerning the liberalization of the telecommunication sector, the development of electronic commerce, the governance of universal access, and developing country responses to globalization and the potential roles of information and communication technologies. She serves as an academic Governor of the LSE and as a Trustee of the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex. She holds honorary professorships at the LINK Centre, Witwatersrand University, South Africa and at the Science and Technology Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex. She is Past President of IAMCR (International Association for Media and Communications Research) and has served as a consultant to UN agencies, the OECD, ministries of governments and leading companies, and is a member of the Boards of several overseas research institutes. Her recent books are The Oxford Handbook of Information and Communication Technologies (ed) Oxford University Press 2007; Trust and Crime in Information Societies (ed) Edward Elgar Publishing 2005, and Mobilizing the Information Society: Strategies for Growth and Opportunity (with W E Steinmueller) Oxford University Press 2000.