PhD student Owen Monroe reflects on his internship with the National Endowment for the Humanities Office of Digital Humanities, held from May to December 2024. Last month, the NEH programs officer Monroe worked with during his internship discussed some of their work at the Digital Humanities conference in Lisbon, Portugal. 

Doctoral candidate Jessie Maimone has been selected as the recipient of the 2025 Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) Youth Services Graduate Student Travel Award. She will be honored at an awards presentation during the ALISE 2025 Annual Conference, which will be held October 6–8 in Kansas City, Missouri.

Eight iSchool master's students have been named 2025-2026 Spectrum Scholars by the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Diversity, Literacy, and Outreach Services. Since 1997, the Spectrum Scholarship Program has assisted over 1,600 graduate-level students pursuing degrees in library and information studies through ALA-accredited programs. This year's scholars were selected based on their commitment to community building, leadership potential, and planned contributions to making social justice as part of everyday work in LIS. The highly competitive scholarship program received four times as many applications as there were available scholarships.

MSIM student Shravani Bhupal was honored for her internship performance at the 19th Annual Research Park Intern Awards ceremony on July 24. The University of Illinois' Research Park is home to over 120 companies and more than 800 interns. Bhupal, who served as an intern at COUNTRY Financial DigitaLab, received the Best Business Innovation Award for her work. 

PhD student Muhammad Hassan has been selected as an IAPP Westin Scholar Award honoree. 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. 

iSchool faculty, staff, and students will present their research at DH2025, the annual conference of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO), which will take place on July 14–18 in Lisbon, Portugal. The digital humanities (DH) conference is the largest event of the international DH community and unites scholars from across the globe. 

PhD candidate Andrew Zalot successfully defended his dissertation, "'Tweet of the Town:' Synthesizing Local and Social Media Discourse on Book Bans," on July 3.

The Library of Congress announced the appointment of 37 undergraduate, graduate students, and recent graduates to its Junior Fellows Program, including seven students from the iSchool. 

The American Library Association (ALA) is pleased to announce the selection of MSLIS student Sarah Shuai Martin of Chicago, Illinois, as the 2025 recipient of the Mary V. Gaver Scholarship.

MSLIS student Fi Keane found their way to the iSchool after working in the children’s section of a bookstore. For the past academic year, they have served as the graduate assistant for Research on Diversity in Youth Literature, a peer-reviewed, open access, academic journal hosted by the iSchool’s Center for Children’s Books.