Valerie is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology at the University of Ottawa. She is currently the lead researcher for the Media Awareness Network’s Young Canadians in a Wired World research project (measuring the effect of new media on young people’s privacy and social relationships) funded by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, the principal investigator for The eGirls Project (examining the performance of gender on social networking sites) funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and a researcher with the New Transparency Project. She is a frequent intervenor on privacy policy issues and is the author of a series of award-winning multimedia games that teach young people how to protect their human rights online.