Dr Alison Hicks’ research featured in the Guardian

Dr Alison Hicks’ research into the growing threat of book bans within UK school libraries has recently been picked up by The Guardian and The Independent, amongst other news outlets. Dr Hicks, whose monograph on how risk is informed within everyday settings will be published with Routledge in May 2025, also contributed a follow up Opinion piece on this topic in the Guardian, which received over 500 comments and responses. This research, which examines the experiences of UK school librarians who have been asked to censor materials, found that requests such as these create a range of risks for these professionals given that their role is not statutorily protected in the UK. Research also found that professional expertise in this area is frequently ignored, with at least one librarian losing their job for refusing to countenance challenges to intellectual freedom.

For further information, please see the following papers:

Hicks, A. (2025). “It does make me reflect… on the nature of the profession”: Experiences of book banning and censorship in school libraries. The School Librarian.

Full Text

Hicks, A. (2025). “It’s in my professional conscience all the time”: School library workers, book banning and censorship. School Libraries in View [Forthcoming]

Hicks, A. (under review). Shelves under siege: School librarians as (temporary?) risk workers.

Hicks, A. (2025). Risk-Informed Information Practice: Ways of Knowing in an Uncertain World. Routledge. [In Press]