Her main area of research is in human rights and technology issues. Her current research focuses on children’s use of networked technologies, and emerging legal conceptions of health information privacy, She is a co-principal investigator (with Jane Bailey of the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law) on a SSHRC-funded project entitled The eGirls Project. This project will explore the ways in which girls and young women incorporate digital media into their lives in an effort to allow them to better contribute to the critical analysis and policy debates regarding online social spaces. Val is an Associate Editor of Surveillance and Society and co-editor (with Ian Kerr and Carole Lucock) of Privacy, Identity and Anonymity in a Network World: Lessons from the Identity Trail (Oxford University Press, 2009).