Cooke, Diesner, and Knox receive tenure

Jana Diesner
Jana Diesner, Affiliate Associate Professor
Emily Knox
Emily Knox, Interim Dean Designate and Professor

The iSchool is proud to announce the promotion of three faculty to associate professor with indefinite tenure: Assistant Professor and MS/LIS Program Director Nicole A. Cooke, Assistant Professor and PhD Program Director Jana Diesner, and Assistant Professor Emily Knox. Their new appointments will be effective August 16, 2018, pending final approval by the Board of Trustees.

Cooke's research interests include human information behavior, particularly in the online context; critical cultural information studies; and diversity and social justice in librarianship with an emphasis on infusing them into LIS education and pedagogy. She is the 2017 recipient of the American Library Association (ALA) Achievement in Library Diversity Research Award as well as 2016 recipient of the ALA Equality Award. Cooke is the author of Information Services to Diverse Populations: Developing Culturally Competent Library Professionals (Libraries Unlimited, 2016) and coeditor with Miriam E. Sweeney (PhD '13) of Teaching for Justice: Implementing Social Justice in the LIS Classroom (Litwin Books/Library Juice Press, 2017). She is the director for Special Interest Groups (SIGs) for the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE). Cooke holds a PhD in communication, information, and library studies from Rutgers University.

Diesner's research in human-centered data science and computational social sciences combines methods from network science, natural language processing and machine learning with theories from the social sciences, humanities, and linguistics to advance knowledge and discovery about interaction-based and information-based systems. Recognition for her research expertise includes appointments as the CIO Scholar for Information Research & Technology at Illinois (2018), faculty fellow at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at Illinois (2015), and as a research fellow in the Dori J. Maynard Senior Research Fellows program (2016), a collaboration of The Center for Investigative Reporting and The Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. She holds a PhD from the Computation, Organizations and Society (COS) program at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science.

Knox's research interests include intellectual freedom and censorship, the intersection of print culture and reading practices, and information ethics and policy. She recently edited Trigger Warnings: History, Theory, Context (2017), published by Rowman & Littlefield. Her previous book, Book Banning in 21st-Century America, also published by Rowman & Littlefield (2015), addresses challenges to materials in public libraries and schools. Knox serves on the boards of the Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T), Freedom to Read Foundation, and National Coalition Against Censorship. Knox received her PhD from the doctoral program at the Rutgers University School of Communication and Information, and she earned her master's in library and information science from the iSchool at Illinois.

Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

iSchool researchers to present at CHI 2025

iSchool faculty and students will present their research at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2025), which will be held from April 26 to May 1 in Yokohama, Japan. 

Undergraduate Research Symposium features iSchool students and mentors

Several iSchool undergraduate students will participate in the 18th annual Undergraduate Research Symposium. During the event, visitors will learn about undergraduate research projects through oral and poster presentations, creative performances, and art exhibits. All are welcome to attend the symposium, which will be held on April 24 from 9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. in the Illini Rooms and South Lounge of the Illini Union. Oral presentations will be held on the second floor of the Illini Union.

Wang wins grand prize at Research Live!

Informatics PhD student Olivia Wang won the Grand Prize at the 2025 Research Live! competition, which was held on April 8 in the Campus Instructional Facility Atrium. At the event, which is hosted by the Graduate College, thirteen finalists presented their graduate research in three minutes or less to a general audience. Wang received $500 as the Grand Prize winner.

Olivia Wang

Zhou defends dissertation

Doctoral candidate Kyrie Zhixuan Zhou successfully defended his dissertation, "A Pragmatic and Human-centered Approach to Promoting Software Accessibility: Design, Education, Governance," on April 3.

Zhixuan Zhou

Knox appointed interim dean

Professor Emily Knox has been appointed to serve as interim dean of the School of Information Sciences, pending approval by the Board of Trustees. Until officially approved, her title will be interim dean designate. The appointment will begin April 1, 2025.

Emily Knox