Aimée Knight, Ph.D. is a Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Saint Joseph’s University, where she directs the Beautiful Social Research Collaborative, a community writing and design program that since 2010 has partnered with more than 130 nonprofit and community organizations across the world. Through this collaborative, she mentors students and community partners in using media and storytelling to build capacity, amplify local voices, and advance community-led design.

She also leads the John Cardinal Foley Program for Media and Civic Engagement, a one-million-dollar endowment supporting community-engaged scholarship and civic-media innovation. A leader in community writing and design, Knight has served as a review panelist for the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Digital Humanities Advancement Grants, taught at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, and led invited workshops at institutions including Johns Hopkins University.

Her book, Community is the Way: Engaged Writing and Designing for Transformative Change (WAC Clearinghouse / University Press of Colorado, 2022), introduced an equity-based framework for community-led design. Her forthcoming project, Regenerative Media: Designing Communication for Justice and Renewal, defines communication practices that repair and strengthen communities through collaboration and storytelling.

Her work grows from the belief that communication, when rooted in community, becomes a practice of co-creation, connection, and repair.