Photo: Pamela Cather www.pamelacather.com
Emily J. M. Knox, PhD, MSLIS, (she/her) is interim dean and professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The second edition of her book, Book Banning in 21st Century America (Bloomsbury) will be published in January 2026. It is part of the Beta Phi Mu Scholars’ Series. Her previous 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. Emily’s articles have been published in the Library Quarterly, Library and Information Science Research, and Open Information Science.
Emily has served on the board of National Coalition Against Censorship, the Freedom to read Foundation, and is a former editor of the Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy.
Her research interests include information access, intellectual freedom and censorship, information ethics and policy, and the intersection of print culture and reading practices. She is also a member of the Mapping Information Access research team.
She has been interviewed by media outlets such as NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, and Slate. She also testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on book banning.
Emily received her Ph.D. from the doctoral program at the Rutgers University School of Communication & Information. Her master’s in library and information science is from the iSchool at Illinois. She also holds a B.A. in Religious Studies from Smith College and an A.M. in the same field from The University of Chicago Divinity School.