The iSchool is proud to announce the following appointments: Emily Knox and Yang Wang have been promoted to professor; Elizabeth Hoiem has been promoted to associate professor with indefinite tenure; Associate Professor Maria Bonn has been granted indefinite tenure; Judith Pintar has been promoted to teaching professor; and Martin Wolske has been promoted to teaching associate professor. Their new appointments became effective August 16, 2024.
Knox's research interests include information access, intellectual freedom, censorship, information ethics, information policy, and the intersection of print culture and reading practices. Her book, Foundations of Intellectual Freedom, won the 2023 Eli M. Oboler Prize for best published work in the area of intellectual freedom. She has been interviewed by media outlets such as NPR and The New York Times and testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on book banning. Knox serves as the board president of the National Coalition Against Censorship and editor of the Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy. She received her PhD from Rutgers University School of Communication & Information.
Wang's research interests include usable privacy and security technologies, social computing, human-computer interaction, and explainable artificial intelligence. His research has gained support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Health and Human Services, Google, Meta, Alcatel-Lucent, and The Privacy Projects. He has appeared in news outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, BBC, and China Daily. Wang earned his PhD in information and computer science from the University of California, Irvine.
Hoiem's research explores the history of technological innovations in children's literature, from early children's books and toys to contemporary applications of digital pedagogy. She received the Judith Plotz Emerging Scholar Award for her article on 1830s radical texts for working children. Her essay on representations of slavery in children's books on manufacturing sugar received the 2021 Illinois Humanities Research Institute Prize for Best Faculty Research. Hoiem holds a PhD in English from Illinois.
Bonn's research focuses on scholarly communication and publishing. Her latest work explores how scholars and the librarians that support them are responding to shifts toward openness in data, publishing, the conduct of science, and education. She has served as a member of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Board of Directors since 2021 and will begin her term as president-elect of the organization in October. Bonn serves as the director of the MS in Library and Information Science and Certificate of Advanced Study programs at the iSchool. She holds a PhD in American literature from SUNY Buffalo.
Pintar's research and teaching interests include narrative design, game studies, and gameful pedagogies, which she pursues through the Extended Literatures & Literacies Lab (EL3). She serves as the director of Game Studies and Design, an interdisciplinary program within Informatics. She is the coauthor of Information Science: The Basics (Routledge, 2023) and leads the interdisciplinary project, “Playful by Design: Expanding the Transformative Potentials of Games@Illinois,” which is funded by the University of Illinois Investment for Growth program. She holds a PhD in sociology from Illinois.
Wolske's research focuses on community informatics; engaged scholarship in the information sciences; critical, culturally sustaining pedagogies, especially as applied within active learning; and critical constructivist approaches to sociotechnical information systems. He teaches courses in networking, information systems, and community informatics and engagement, for which he received the 2011 Library Journal Teaching Award. He serves as an editorial board member of The Journal of Community Informatics and as a conference committee member for the Community Informatics Research Network. He holds a PhD in behavioral neuroscience and biopsychology from Rutgers.
