Doctoral candidate Beth Bloch successfully defended her dissertation, "The Values and Ethics of Biomedical Engineering Practices in The Design of Novel Biotechnologies," on November 13.

iSchool Associate Professor Masooda Bashir and Informatics PhD student Tanusree Sharma have published a paper, "Use of Apps in the COVID-19 Response and the Loss of Privacy Protection," in Nature Medicine. In the paper, they examine how digital surveillance used to contain the spread of COVID-19 may impact privacy rights.

Associate Professor and BS/IS Program Director Emily Knox has been named the iSchool's Centennial Scholar for 2019-2020. Endowed by alumni and friends of the School, the Centennial Scholar award recognizes outstanding accomplishments and/or professional promise in the field of library and information science.

Associate Professor and BS/IS Program Director Emily Knox and John T. F. Burgess, assistant professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama, have co-edited a new book. Foundations of Information Ethics, recently published by ALA Neal-Schuman, covers principles and concepts in information ethics as well as the history of ethics in the information professions. 

Doctoral candidate E.E. Lawrence successfully defended their dissertation, "Reading for Democratic Citizenship: A New Model for Readers' Advisory," on March 28.

Assistant Professor Emily Knox will give a presentation on trigger warnings on April 9 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Her talk, "Trigger Warnings: History, Theory, Context," will provide an overview of the multiple histories of trigger warnings as well as context for understanding how and why trigger warnings are used.

Whether you're a cybersecurity student, researcher, or professional, you are likely to confront difficult ethical dilemmas that can have significant implications. Equipped with skills like malware knowledge and hacking techniques, those in the field of cybersecurity have inside knowledge that can be powerful and potentially dangerous. There is a growing need to tether this power to an awareness of the complex web of potential consequences, critical ethical reasoning skills, and perhaps most importantly, a sense of social responsibility to ensure this power is used for the greater good.

Knox takes a comprehensive look at trigger warnings in her edited book, Trigger Warnings: History, Theory, Context, which was recently published by Rowman & Littlefield. The book provides the historical context and theory behind trigger warnings as well as case studies from instructors and students describing when trigger warnings were and were not used.

Associate Professor Carol Tilley will speak twice this summer on topics at the intersection of comics and medicine.

Assistant Professor Emily Knox will speak at the Information Ethics Roundtable on April 8 at the University of Arizona. This annual interdisciplinary meeting addresses the ethical questions raised by life in an information society.

Thanks to research conducted by Associate Professor Carol Tilley, the work of one of the most influential anti-comics voices has been debunked. Psychiatrist Fredric Wertham’s evidence of the negative effects of comic readership on young people hasn’t been taken seriously by scholars in decades, but a new discovery by Tilley shows that even when Wertham’s claims were taken as fact by many—in the 1940s and 1950s—a small but vocal group was already questioning his methods.

Associate Professor Bonnie Mak will travel to the United Arab Emirates in March to take part in a workshop at New York University’s Abu Dhabi Institute. “Charisma of the Book: Global Perspectives for the 21st Century,” will be held March 12-14.

Assistant Professor Emily Knox will participate in a panel discussion on “Libraries and Public Access to Books” at the Tucson Festival of Books on Saturday, March 12. Knox and fellow experts will explore the topic of information access and the ways libraries have shaped conversations surrounding issues of access.

William H. Dutton, Quello Professor of Media and Information Policy at Michigan State University, will deliver the Spring 2016 Windsor Lecture at 4:00 p.m. on Monday, March 14, in GSLIS Room 126. His lecture is titled, "Information Power Shifts and the Fifth Estate." A reception will be held in the GSLIS east foyer immediately following the lecture.

GSLIS Assistant Professor Emily Knox has been named a 2015 Instructor of the Year by the Web-based Information Science Education (WISE) Consortium. Knox was nominated by students for her excellent instruction in the Fall 2015 course, Intellectual Freedom and Censorship (LIS590FRL).

Assistant Professor Jana Diesner will speak at two upcoming conferences on the topic of collection and use of digital social trace data. Her talks will address current issues in this research field, including privacy, ethics and regulations, and methodological issues related to data accuracy as well as considering the content of text data for advancing social network theory.

Associate Professor Terry Weech and more than a dozen GSLIS students will travel to Lyon, France, next week to participate in the BOBCATSSS 2016 symposium, held January 27-29.

The group HP Kids Read is the 2015 recipient of the Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award, given annually by the faculty of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and cosponsored by Libraries Unlimited.

Assistant Professor Nicole A. Cooke and affiliated faculty member Clara Chu have been appointed to serve on a new American Library Association (ALA) task force on LIS accreditation. The Task Force on the Context of Future Accreditation is charged with drafting a white paper describing the fields and context for which ALA will be making accreditation decisions in the future. Based on their…

Assistant Professor Emily Knox is the 2015 recipient of the Illinois Library Association (ILA) Intellectual Freedom Award.The award, presented by the ILA Intellectual Freedom Committee, recognizes an individual or group for outstanding contributions in defending intellectual freedom or the advancement of these principles.