Bukhman Philanthropies is delighted to announce a £300,000 grant to Imperial College London for a new research project exploring how children interact with AI, and how these interactions may shape their confidence, independence and wellbeing.
The two-year project, Thinking for Themselves: Supporting Children’s Confidence and Wellbeing in an AI-Shaped World, will be led by the Centre for Health Policy at Imperial’s Institute of Global Health Innovation.
The project will be led by Sophia Batchelor, Analytics Fellow at the Institute of Global Health Innovation, who brings a strong track record in evaluating digital technologies and understanding patterns of need among children and young people. She will lead the project’s quantitative and experimental work, helping to build robust, policy-relevant evidence on how children use AI and what this may mean for their development.
As AI tools become increasingly embedded in children’s everyday lives, there is an urgent need to understand not only how young people use these systems, but how they may influence the way children think, make decisions, seek help and understand themselves. The project will focus particularly on questions of confidence, independence and wellbeing, aiming to generate evidence that can inform safer design, better guidance and more thoughtful policy.
Imperial’s Institute of Global Health Innovation has a longstanding commitment to improving children’s mental health and the support available to them. This new project builds on that foundation, including the Institute’s experience involving young people directly in research. Previous work includes the Middle Years Project, conducted in collaboration with Mental Health Innovations, which explored the mental health experiences of students in Years 6–8.
In keeping with that commitment, Thinking for Themselves will be supported by a public advisory group of children and parents, ensuring that young people’s voices remain at the heart of the research.
Speaking about the award, Sophia Batchelor said:
“We are deeply grateful to Bukhman Philanthropies for their generosity and support of this project. AI is already so pervasive in the lives of children, and significant research is needed to understand the impact modern LLMs have on how children think and form an understanding of the world. It is our responsibility as researchers to inform the development of these technologies in a way that supports the next generation to flourish, and we are very excited for what this project will discover.”
Daria Bukhman, Co-Founder and Chair of Bukhman Philanthropies, said:
“AI is transforming how children learn, think and see themselves, and it is doing so faster than our understanding can keep pace. We need rigorous, independent research to close that gap, and I am thrilled to support this team at Imperial in producing evidence that can genuinely shape how we protect children’s confidence and independence in an AI-shaped world.”
The grant forms part of Bukhman Philanthropies’ wider commitment to understanding the impact of AI on youth mental health and supporting work that helps make digital environments safer, more thoughtful and more supportive for children and young people.