Asian Anti-Bullying Symposium 2026: Towards Safer Schools, Communities, and Digital Spaces
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About the Symposium
Bullying remains one of the most pressing threats to the well-being, safety, and healthy development of children and youth worldwide. Across Asia, rapid digitalisation, increasing social media use, growing academic pressures, and changing family and community structures have transformed both the nature and consequences of bullying. While traditional forms of school bullying continue to affect many young people, cyberbullying, online harassment, image-based abuse, AI-generated harmful content, and anonymous online aggression have created new challenges for educators, practitioners, policymakers, and families.
Despite growing research, significant gaps remain between evidence, policy development, and frontline practice. Asian societies also face unique cultural, educational, technological, and policy contexts that may shape the prevalence, manifestation, and prevention of bullying differently from Western settings.
The SSR 2026 Anti-Bullying Symposium aims to convene leading scholars, practitioners, government representatives, educators, and community organisations from across Asia to examine emerging trends, share evidence-based interventions, and identify future directions for regional collaboration. Through comparative discussions across East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, the symposium seeks to strengthen regional knowledge exchange and promote integrated responses that span prevention, early intervention, and recovery.
Symposium Objectives
The symposium seeks to:
- Examine contemporary trends in bullying and cyberbullying across Asian societies.
- Compare national policies, prevention frameworks, and intervention strategies.
- Explore emerging digital challenges, including AI-enabled online harms.
- Highlight evidence-based school, family, and community interventions.
- Foster collaboration among researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and technology stakeholders.
- Identify future priorities for anti-bullying research, policy, and practice in Asia.
Opening Presentation
Bullying in the Digital Age: Emerging Trends, Persistent Challenges, and Future Directions
William C. Friday Distinguished Professor of Education,
School of Education,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Dorothy Espelage is an American psychologist. She is the William C. Friday Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), and an international expert in bullying, youth aggression, and teen dating violence. She has authored several books including Bullying in North American Schools, Bullying Prevention and Intervention: Realistic Strategies for Schools, and Handbook of Bullying in Schools: an International Perspective. She also works with the Senate and Congress, particularly by advising them on harassment prevention issues.
Moderator: Professor Rebecca P. Ang
Professor, Associate Vice Provost,
National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University & Singapore
Rebecca P. Ang is a Professor with the Psychology and Child & Human Development Department, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She obtained her PhD in School Psychology (specializing in clinical child psychology) from Texas A & M University, USA. She is a Nationally Certified School Psychologist in the USA, and a Registered Psychologist in Singapore. Professor Ang is a well-cited researcher whose scholarly work has been published in high-impact journals. She has been recognized in Stanford University/Elsevier’s world’s top 2% scientists list for the last consecutive 5 years from 2021 to 2025. Her research and professional interests focus on developmental child psychopathology, with an emphasis on bullying, cyberbullying, and related prevention and intervention strategies. She works with multiple stakeholders including government ministries, educators and allied mental health professionals to promote multisystemic support for the mental health and wellbeing of children and adolescents.
Panel 1: Bullying Research, Policy, and Practice in East Asia
Bullying Research in Japan: A Brief History, Current Trends, and Expanding Collaboration across Asia
Professor,
Osaka Kyoiku University
Yuichi Toda is Professor at Osaka Kyoiku University (Osaka University of Education). He received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Tokyo, and then completed doctoral coursework at the University of Tokyo. He was a visiting fellow at Goldsmiths College, University of London, from March 1998 to January 1999, and was a short-term Visiting Professor at the University of Vienna during the summers from 2007 to 2010. He has published several articles in English on bullying/ijime. His research with Dr. Dagmar Strohmeier was awarded den Hauptpreis des Bank Austria Preises zur Förderung innovativer Forschungsprojekte in 2008.
Understanding Legal and Educational Responses to Cyberbullying in South Korea
Professor, Department of Education
Ewha Womans University
Insoo Oh, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Education at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, Korea. He earned his doctoral degree in Counselor Education from The Pennsylvania State University. He previously served as an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina and as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. His research has focused on bystander responses to school bullying and cyberbullying, and he has conducted practice-oriented prevention and intervention research informed by ten years of experience as a public school teacher. In 2016, he received the Award for Prevention and Eradication of School Violence from the Korean Ministry of Education. He has served as editor of the Journal of Educational Studies and has published more than 120 peer-reviewed journal articles and five academic books on bullying. More recently, his work has explored bullying prevention through positive psychology and social-emotional learning (SEL).
Is Adolescents’ Psychological Distress a Risk Factor or an Outcome of School Victimization? Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mainland, Majority, and Minority
Professor,
Department of Social Work,
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Prof. Ji-Kang Chen is a Professor of the Department of Social Work at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His primary research interests focus on cross‑national comparative studies of school and cyber violence/bullying, as well as child well‑being. His work advances theoretical and practical knowledge in three Chinese-speaking societies (Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mainland China) and internationally, aiming to inform effective strategies and policies to reduce school violence and bullying. As a pioneering researcher in this area across three Chinese-speaking societies, he has received numerous competitive grants and published widely in prestigious academic journals. He has also been invited by NGOs, legislators, and governments to advise on strategies and policies addressing school violence. Prof. Chen has been named among the World’s Top 2% Scientists by Stanford University and Elsevier, highlighting his global scholarly impact. He currently serves as Associate Editor for two reputable academic journals, Educational Psychology and Applied Research in Quality of Life. He also serves on the Editorial Boards of leading journals, including Journal of School Violence, Youth & Society, and Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma. His teaching excellence has been recognized with the Exemplary Teaching Award from CUHK (2016) and the Award for Excellence in Teaching from the University of Southern California (2006).
Moderator: A/P Lee Jungup
Associate Professor
Department of Social Work,
Co-Director
Social Service Research Centre
National University of Singapore
A/Prof Jungup Lee is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work and Co-Director of Social Service Research Centre at National University of Singapore. Her research primarily focuses on youth mental health and digital well-being, cyberbullying and online sexual harms, and technology in children and youth development. She currently conducts various research projects under her research interests, such as an exploratory study on the mechanism of cyberbullying in a multipronged approach, a mixed-method study (surveys, interviews, and text mining) of campus sexual misconduct and online harassment, human-AI cooperation on mental illness stigma, and an interdisciplinary cross-cultural study on the integration of technology innovation on youth mental health and wellness.
Panel 2: Bullying Research, Policy, and Practice in South and Southeast Asia
Bullying and cyberbullying among children and youth in Singapore: Trends, prevention, and lessons
Assistant Professor,
Psychology and Child & Human Development,
National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University
Dr. Cheung Hoi Shan is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology and Child & Human Development Department at the National Institute of Education. She is a developmental psychologist whose work focuses on translating research into practice in education and the social services. Her research examines parent-child attachment and its role as a protective factor in reducing school bullying, as well as in enhancing children’s academic performance and well-being.
School and Community Responses to Bullying in Malaysia: From Reporting to Collaborative Prevention
Senior Lecturer,
School of Law and Governance,
Taylor's University Malaysia
Dr. Mogana Sunthari Subramaniam is a Senior Lecturer in Law whose academic and research work centres on the best interests of the child principle under the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Her scholarship spans custody and visitation disputes, child adoption, child abuse and neglect, and children’s access to education, with comparative engagement across Malaysia, Japan, Taiwan and the United Kingdom.
Understanding and Preventing School Bullying in India: Children’s Voices, Cultural Contexts, and Evidence from Punjab
Professor,
Department of Psychology,
Punjabi University Patiala
I am a Professor of Psychology at Punjabi University Patiala, India. My areas of interest are Child and Adolescent Development, and Cyber Psychology. I have successfully introduced a paper on Cyber Psychology at the Masters level at Punjabi University Patiala, which is a pioneering work in India. Recently, I have set up an Online and Telephonic Counselling Training Cell at Punjabi University Patiala which is again a first of its kind. I have published more than 100 research papers / articles (30 in Scopus) and presented my research on child and adolescent development, mental health and well-being, and Cyber Psychology in over 90 national/ international conferences. I have also co-edited a book entitled “Bullying, Cyberbullying, and Student Well-being in Schools: Comparing European, Australian and Indian Perspectives” published by Cambridge University Press, London. My research work has appeared in various international journals published by Routledge, Taylor and Francis, Sage, Wiley and Blackwell, Elsevier, Springer and Sage. I have supervised 9 Ph.D. Thesis and 12 M.Phil. dissertations and currently advising four doctoral dissertations in the field of Cyber Psychology. I have successfully completed four major national and international sponsored research projects on various issues related to child and adolescent development and well-being, and have been the principal investigator of Indian-European Research Networking Programme - India’s first multilateral agreement in social sciences. I am also heading a special research group “Australia-India Well-being Studies” at Flinders University Adelaide and am a part of many prestigious international research consortiums on child well-being. My opinions and articles on issues related to child and adolescent mental health and school/online safety regularly appear in the regional /national and international print and electronic media. I am passionately involved in community work related to school mental health, cyber safety and psychological well-being in children and women. I have been working closely with a number of educational institutions / NGOs and community organizations for spreading awareness about child and youth mental health and school safety. I am also the founder member of Young Progressive Sikh Forum (YPSF), a platform for furthering the educational, employment and entrepreneurial skills and opportunities for the young.
Moderator: Ms Jerrine Khong
Research Unit,
Singapore Children’s Society
Jerrine is a Senior Research Officer with the Research Unit at Singapore Children’s Society, where she conducts research to identify social trends and issues related to children, youth and families in Singapore. Her work focuses on school and cyberbullying, children’s mental health and well-being, and motivation interventions in education. She is particularly interested in using research to better understand children’s experiences and perspectives and ensure they are reflected in the systems that support them.