In this blog post, we will tell you about our fifth meeting with our lay advisory board, which was held on Tuesday 8th September 2026.
This meeting had two main goals:
- To introduce our new members: Sophie (our new postdoctoral researcher) and Nidhi (our new advisory board member)
- To exchange ideas about our upcoming workshop
Context: our upcoming workshop
We are planning to hold a workshop with charitable organisations in January 2026 (to be discussed in a further blog post once we have the details confirmed). The aim of the workshop is to discuss how we can create inclusive online spaces. The day will involve presentations of our research findings, talks from our project partners, as well as hands-on activities based.
Who should we invite to the workshop?
First, we discussed potential organisations that may benefit from attending the workshop. We came up with many ideas and talked about the importance of inviting organisations from diverse fields, such as education, social mobility, support services, accessible technology, and mental health. In addition, we considered how to facilitate the participation of the advisory board and autistic young ambassadors. For example, Nidhi suggested providing some reading material beforehand that people could share thoughts on during the event.
What should the workshop cover?
Next, we discussed the workshop aims and how to facilitate a successful event. Here, Joe emphasised the importance of being specific in language, as different organisations might have their own definition of words like “inclusive,” for example. This will help us to ensure that everybody is on the same page and not misunderstanding each other.
In addition, we talked about which findings would be the most important to emphasise during the workshop and other public engagement material. Georgie noted that our findings about why many social media users ‘lurk’ online or have a general ‘fear of getting it wrong’ would likely be of interest to many workshop attendees. At the same time, Joe also highlighted the importance of providing a counterbalance to the often-negative views of social media that we get in the school curriculum or the news media.
Next steps
The project team will soon start sending out invitations to charitable organisations and preparing the workshop agenda based on these discussions.
