School of Information Sciences

Knox named to IJIDI editorial board

Emily Knox
Emily Knox, Interim Dean and Professor

Associate Professor Emily Knox has been invited to join the editorial board of The International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion (IJIDI). The quarterly, open-access online journal is sponsored by East Carolina University and the University of Toronto and hosted on the servers of the University of Toronto Library.

"It's an honor to join the board of IJIDI. In this time, when initiatives that center on inclusion and diversity are under attack, having an open access research venue that highlights DEI research in LIS is vitally important," said Knox.

She noted that one of her most cited articles, "Silencing Stories: Challenges to Diverse Books," was published in IJIDI.

Knox is the board president of the National Coalition Against Censorship and editor of the Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy. She also is a member of the Mapping Information Access research team, an academic research project examining information access and availability in U.S. public schools and libraries.

Her research interests include information access, intellectual freedom, censorship, information ethics, information policy, and the intersection of print culture and reading practices. Her book, Book Banning in 21st Century America (Rowman & Littlefield), is the first monograph in the Beta Phi Mu Scholars' Series. Her most recent book, Foundations of Intellectual Freedom (ALA Neal-Schuman), won the 2023 Eli M. Oboler Prize for best published work in the area of intellectual freedom.

Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

New multi-institutional project to use AI to represent past historical periods

A new project led by a team of researchers from four universities aims to create and evaluate language models that represent past historical periods. The project, "Artificial Intelligence for Cultural and Historical Reasoning," was recently selected for a 2025 Humanities and AI Virtual Institute (HAVI) award from Schmidt Sciences. The $800,000 grant will be split among four institutions: Cornell University, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, The University of British Columbia, and McGill University. Professor Ted Underwood will serve as the principal investigator for the portion of the project at Illinois.

Ted Underwood

Wang group to present at WSDM26

Professor and Associate Dean for Research Dong Wang and PhD student Ruohan Zong will present their research at the 19th ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM 26), which will be held from February 22–26 in Boise, Idaho. WSDM is a premier international conference in web search, data mining, and AI, known for its highly selective acceptance rates. This year, the acceptance rate for the main track of the conference was only 16 percent. 

Dong Wang

New NSF award supports innovative role-playing game approach to strengthening research security in academia

A new National Science Foundation (NSF) award will support an innovative effort in the School of Information Sciences to strengthen research security by using structured role-playing games (RPG) to model the threats facing academic research environments. The project, titled "REDTEAM: Research Environment Defense Through Expert Attack Modeling," addresses a growing challenge: balancing the open, collaborative nature of academic research with increasing national security risks and sophisticated adversarial threats. 

Spectrum Scholar Spotlight: Mariana Guerrero

Eight iSchool master's students have been named 2025–2026 Spectrum Scholars by the American Library Association. This "Spectrum Scholar Spotlight" series highlights the School's scholars. MSLIS student Mariana Guerrero earned a bachelor's degree in Spanish language and literature from Rockford University.

Mariana Guerrero

Raji selected for IAPP Westin Scholar Award

PhD student Mubarak Raji has been selected as an IAPP Westin Scholar Award honoree for the 2025-2026 academic year. The annual awards were created by the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) to support students who are identified as future leaders in the field of privacy and data protection. Honorees receive a $1,000 cash award; two years of membership with the IAPP; three complimentary exams for IAPP certifications (CIPP, CIPM, CIPT); and unlimited access to online training for the recipient's selected IAPP certification exams.

Mubarak Raji headshot

School of Information Sciences

501 E. Daniel St.

MC-493

Champaign, IL

61820-6211

Voice: (217) 333-3280

Email: ischool@illinois.edu

Back to top