Cara Wilson

Dr Cara Wilson is a Lecturer in Children and Technology at the University of Edinburgh, affiliated with the Children and Technology Group within the Institute for Education, Community and Society. She is also a founding member of the Children, Interaction and Design (CID) group and an affiliate of the Institute for Design Informatics and the Edinburgh Futures Institute.

Her research focuses on enhancing inclusion and diversity in technology development through participatory design, co-design, and speculative methods, particularly in contexts involving neurodiverse children, autism, and intergenerational design. She emphasizes accessibility, child-centred AI, and embodied interaction design to amplify the voices of marginalized individuals in the design process.

• Participatory Design
• Co-Design
• Design for Neurodiversity and Autism
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Design for Health and Wellbeing
• Artificial Intelligence (GenAI, Child-Centred AI)

Dr Wilson has secured significant funding from the UKRI’s cross-research council responsive mode round 1 pilot scheme for her project Grasping Data: Empowering young children to understand and benefit from their personal data. She is also leading initiatives like Towards embedding responsible AI in the school system: co-creation with young people and AI Futures for Scottish education, addressing ethical integration of generative AI in education.

She was recognized with the Staff Recognition Award for Innovation for her contributions to the field.

Dr Wilson actively collaborates with interdisciplinary teams, including the Regulation and Design (RAD) Lab, and contributes to public engagement and co-design skills development in health-data research through her work at the Advanced Care Research Centre (ACRC).