Rate My Professor Bronwyn Cumbo

Dr. Bronwyn Cumbo is an affiliate researcher within the Emerging Technologies Research Lab in the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University and a Lecturer with the Transdisciplinary School at the University of Technology Sydney. She earned her PhD in Sustainable Futures from the University of Technology Sydney in 2020, with a thesis entitled 'Child participation beyond the adult realm: Participatory Design in nature-play contexts.' Previously, Cumbo served as a Research Fellow in the Department of Human Centred Computing at Monash University. Her career also includes visiting research scholar positions at Aarhus University from August 2018 to July 2019 and at City University of New York from February 2016 to February 2017. As an interdisciplinary design researcher at the intersection of participatory design, human-computer interaction, science and technology studies, and sustainability, Cumbo focuses on creative and critical participatory methods that incorporate diverse voices, values, and knowledges into design processes. Her work particularly explores how interactive technologies can be co-designed with children in more-than-human contexts to promote environmental stewardship, civic engagement, and sustainable digital and AI futures for children and young people.

Cumbo has received several accolades for her contributions, including the 2021 Best Paper Honorable Mention at ACM CHI for 'Exploring the Opportunities for Online Learning Platforms to Support the Emergency Home School Context,' the 2020 First-cycle winner and short-listing for the World Health Organization NCD Lab innovative tools initiative for 'Kids Co-designing Healthy and Sustainable Environments resource tool-kit,' and the 2019 Steve Howard Best Paper Award at OzCHI for the 'Least-Adult' Role in Participatory Design with Children. Her key publications include 'Future schools and the energy implications of AI in education: A review of scenarios and method for engaging young people in futures thinking' (2025, Policy Futures in Education), '"We\'re already experts in school, right?": Supporting students’ construction of future school scenarios' (2025, Futures), 'A Design Vocabulary for Scaffolding Group Interaction Archetypes through Synchronous Telephony' (2024, Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction), '"We’ve tried to keep the beast on a leash": the domestication of digital classroom surveillance' (2024, Surveillance & Society), and 'In the era of climate change: Exploring research at the intersection of children, emerging technology, and environmental sustainability' (2024, Proceedings of ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference). With 24 research outputs spanning articles, conference papers, and book chapters, her scholarship advances participatory approaches in human-centered computing and environmental education.