An intergenerational
whole-of-society approach
bringing together
Researchers
in a global hybrid symposium

🗓️ 20-21 October 2026 at Stone & Chalk Adelaide, SA & Online
🕒 GMT +10.30 | Adelaide | AU, NZ, APAC
🕒 GMT +2 | Copenhagen | UK, EU
🕒 GMT -4 | Ontario | USA, CA

Registration: OPEN SOON

Let's collaborate!

Why it matters?

Rather than treating emerging technology as a distant future issue, RaiseWisely creates space for the people shaping these systems and supporting young people every day to ask better questions, share insight, and build clearer pathways toward evidence-informed digital mental health and wellbeing.

Together, we will explore how responsible AI design, digital mental health governance, evidence and evaluation, data protection, human oversight, clinical and educational safeguards, and real-world implementation can better support children, young people, families, and the village around them.

The digital environments where young people now spend a significant part of their social lives are evolving fast. AI companions, algorithmic platforms, immersive worlds, gaming ecosystems, and virtual communities are becoming part of how young people connect, play, express themselves, seek support, and form identity.

As these spaces grow more influential, often faster than safeguards, policy, and public understanding can keep up, digital mental health and safety can no longer be treated only as an individual or clinical concern. It is now a shared societal challenge, shaping daily interactions across families, schools, health systems, technology platforms, policy settings, and communities.

Australia . New Zealand . Japan . Thailand . Indonesia . Singapore . Denmark . UK . Canada . USA
‍

"Let's co-create a safer digital future for our next generations."

Christel Cherryadi

Day 1: The NEXT Social Dilemma

Tuesday, 20 October 2026 focuses on why digital mental health is becoming one of the defining safety, ethics, and implementation challenges of the AI era.

The social media era has shown how difficult it is for families, schools, health systems, policymakers, researchers, and technology providers to respond once digital platforms are already embedded in young people’s everyday lives. As AI, gaming ecosystems, immersive environments, and algorithmic platforms become increasingly intertwined with the next generation’s digital society, the question is no longer only what went wrong. It is what we can do earlier, and more collaboratively.

Day 1 brings research, clinical practice, education, policy, and industry innovation into a shared conversation about how emerging technologies can be understood, designed, evaluated, and implemented in ways that support mental health, strengthen safeguards, and help communities respond with greater clarity, evidence, and care.

Program
‍🕒 8:30 AM · Registration
🕒 9:00 AM · Mapping the Landscape
🕒 10:45 AM · Reading the Signals
🕒 01:30 PM · Shaping the Response
🕒 03:15 PM · RaiseWisely Re-QUEST
🕒 05.00 PM · Reception

Scheduled in local time across livestream host time zones.

Registration: OPEN SOON

Let's collaborate!

Day 2: Co-Create a Safer Digital Future

Wednesday, 21 October 2026, unfolds the systems, relationships, and practical conditions needed to create safer digital futures for the next generations.

Digital wellbeing cannot be addressed by young people, parents, schools, clinicians, policymakers, researchers, or technology providers in isolation. It requires shared language, evidence-informed practice, trusted pathways, ethical innovation, and coordinated action across the ecosystems that shape young people’s lives. This is not a wait-and-see moment.

Across families, schools, health systems, communities, government, research, and industry, there are already meaningful spheres of influence where action can begin today through better literacy, stronger support pathways, safer design, practical safeguards, and interconnected implementation.

Through an intergenerational, whole-of-society approach, RaiseWisely explores how these sectors can work together to move from fragmented concern to practical, preventative, and scalable change.

Program
🕒 8:30 AM · Open door
‍🕒 9:00 AM · Mapping the Landscape
🕒 10:45 AM · Reading the Signals
🕒 01:30 PM · Shaping the Response
🕒 03:15 PM · RaiseWisely Re-QUEST
🕒 05.00 PM · Close

Scheduled in local time across livestream host time zones.

Registration: OPEN SOON

let's collaborate!

Confirmed Keynote Speakers

Prof Carolyn Semmler RaiseWisely

🇦🇺 Prof. Carolyn Semmler

Professor of Psychology, Adelaide University
Carolyn leads the Applied Cognition and Experimental Psychology (ACEP) research group at Adelaide University and is a member of the Australian Machine Learning Institute (AIML).

Her research uses experimental methods and modelling of cognitive processes to understand and improve human decision-making as technologies like AI and social media has vastly changed human experience.

🇦🇺 Christel Cherryadi

Founder | AI-XR Innovator, Creart Digital Media Pty Ltd
Based in South Australia, Christel is a multi-award-winning XR AI innovator and SocioTechPreneur. With 15+ years in creative technology, who now pioneers responsible innovation in EdTech and Mental HealthTech, translating research-informed and evidence-based knowledge into real-world impact, contributing to 8 UN SDGs.

As both an innovator and researcher, Christel is committed to interconnecting cross-sector collaboration to build long-term evidence-based real-world impact in South Australia and beyond.

🇦🇺 Stela Solar

CEO of Stone & Chalk, Australia’s largest innovation community
Stela also serves on the Data & AI Advisory Council at Beyond Blue. A recognised technology leader, she was previously Managing Director for Data&AI at Accenture ANZ, served as the Inaugural Director of Australia's National AI Centre and Co-chair of the Commonwealth AI Consortium, after holding several leadership positions at Microsoft.

🇳🇿 Prof. Eryn Newman

Professor of Psychology, University of Waikato, NZ
Eryn was an Associate Professor in the ANU School of Medicine and Psychology. Eryn’s research and training are in memory and cognition.

How do we come to believe that things are true - even when they are not? How can we remember things that never actually happened? To what extent can we correct myths and false beliefs, or even protect ourselves from succumbing to them in the first place?

🇦🇺 Judith Lovegrove

Director at Department of Child Protection‍
Judith is a Ngarrindjeri woman with extensive cultural connections across South Australia and is now the Chairperson of Aboriginal Elders and Community Care Services. She has held several roles in both government (Department for Education, Department for the Premier and Cabinet, and Department for Health and Wellbeing) and non-government organisations.

With a dedication to broader social justice issues, she is an active advocate for the health and wellbeing of families and recently received Honorary Appointment by SAHMRI as Associate Research Fellow.

🇦🇺 Prof. Gemma Sharp

Professor of Psychology at Adelaide University‍
Professor Gemma Sharp established and has led the Body Image, Eating and Weight Disorders Research Program since 2018 and was promoted to Professor in 2024.

Gemma is a registered clinical psychologist and has had clinical experience in the public and private sectors in multiple Australian states. She is a Credentialed Eating Disorder Clinician (CEDC) and a Board Approved Supervisor with the Psychology Board of Australia.

More speakers and contributors to be announced . . .

Joining us on Panels

🇦🇺Prof. Robyn Young, Professor of Psychology at Finders University

🇦🇺
A/Prof. Nathan Caruana, Associate Professor of HAVIC at Flinders University

🇦🇺
Dr. Tiffany de Sousa Machado, Transformative Wellbeing at Dr. Tiff‍

🇦🇺
Eloise Leaver, Industry Growth Manager at the National AI Center‍

🇦🇺Dr. Susannah Emery, Senior Lecturer in Games at Adelaide University‍

🇦🇺
Dr. Yuan Zhang, Senior Researcher of AIML at Adelaide University
‍

🇦🇺
Dr. Lana Tikhomirov, Researcher of AIML at Adelaide University‍

🇩🇰
Sara Leander-Pehrson CEO of Heka VR‍

Responding well requires more than good intentions. It requires evidence-informed approaches that help parents, teachers, professionals, policymakers, and industry better understand the impact of digital technologies on young people's wellbeing, learning, relationships, and future participation.

Equally important is creating spaces where difficult conversations can occur openly, where evidence can be examined thoughtfully, and where different sectors can work together to develop practical, responsible solutions.

RaiseWisely, together with its inaugural eMental Health International Symposium, provides an important forum for those conversations. Its focus on digital wellbeing, mental health, responsible innovation, and the evolving role of technology in young people's lives is both timely and highly relevant.

Celia Jordan

chair of the board of directors, helping minds

Registration: OPEN SOON

let's collaborate!

Frequently asked questions

join us in adelaide or online

RaiseWisely International eMental Health Symposium fosters collaboration across research, innovation, policy, and practice to shape safer digital futures and the role of AI, gaming, and emerging technologies in preventive mental health.

Who is this for?

RaiseWisely International eMental Health Symposium is designed to connect researchers, clinicians, educators, school leaders, policy makers, industry innovators, lived experience contributors, and community stakeholders working across digital wellbeing, AI, XR, gaming, online safety, and young people mental health.

The symposium explores how emerging technologies are reshaping mental health, learning, identity, relationships, and wellbeing, with a focus on safer, evidence-informed, and responsible innovation for young people and communities.

Is this a research conference or industry event?

RaiseWisely is intentionally designed as a cross-sector symposium to connect research, innovation, policy, and practice around one shared challenge: how we build safer digital futures for young people.

Grounded in evidence-informed thinking, the symposium takes a whole-of-society, interconnected, and intergenerational approach to digital wellbeing, recognising that global challenges in AI, XR, gaming, social media, and online safety require shared responsibility, stronger translation from evidence to impact and from policy to practice, and a more connected approach to how emerging technologies are understood, designed, governed, and used.

Can I attend online?

Yes. The symposium is designed as a hybrid global event, with in-person participation in Adelaide and online access for national and international attendees.

Online sessions will be scheduled across three key time zones:
GMT+10:30 | Adelaide, Australia
GMT+2 | Copenhagen, Denmark
GMT-4 | Ontario, Canada

How can we collaborate?

Let’s ignite a global conversation to co-create safer digital futures.
‍
The RaiseWisely eMental Health International Symposium is creating a safe space for change across mental health, education, policy, technology and youth wellbeing.

We welcome individuals and organisations to join as online collaborators, co-hosting organisations, speakers, knowledge partners or cross-sector contributors. CONNECT WITH US!

How can I support RaiseWisely?

Be an advocate
Help raise awareness about safer digital futures for young people. Share RaiseWisely with your school, workplace, community, or networks, and help start more informed conversations around digital wellbeing, AI, gaming, social media, and online safety.

‍Give or sponsor
Support RaiseWisely through individual giving, community contributions, sponsorship, or future crowdfunding campaigns. Every contribution helps us develop resources, improve access, support delivery, and bring research-informed digital wellbeing education to more families, schools, and communities.

‍Become a patron
Patrons help sustain the long-term vision behind RaiseWisely and Mirror XR. Your support enables deeper research translation, program development, evaluation, and access for communities that may not otherwise have the resources to participate.