John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference
The John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference was established as an annual event in 1990. Held in April each year, the conference provides an opportunity for students who are pursuing individual research projects to present those projects in a public forum. Research projects pursued by students at any level - freshman through senior - and in any academic program throughout the university, are eligible to participate. Research can be presented either in a poster session format, or in a (15-min) oral presentation.
The 2025 John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference will be held on April 12, 2025
The 2025 John Wesley Powell Keynote Speaker
Emily J.M. Knox, Ph.D
Biography
Emily J. M. Knox, PhD, MSLIS, (she/her) is interim dean designate and professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
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. Emily's articles have been published in the Library Quarterly, Library and Information Science Research. and Open Information Science.
Emily serves on the board of National Coalition Against Censorship and is the 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.
The John Wesley Powell 2025 Student Research Conference Presentation Schedules
The conference typically attracts more than 100 undergraduates, who showcase research projects from a variety of University departments and programs, including: psychology, economics, political science, biology, mathematics, chemistry, English, theatre, and history.