Community-engaged teacher and scholar in Rhetoric & Writing. Author of Community is the Way: Engaged Writing and Designing for Transformative Change.
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Aimée Knight is an educator and scholar whose work centers on community writing and designing for transformative change. With a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Writing from Michigan State University, Aimée is a Professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Saint Joseph's University.
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Her expertise in community writing is evident through her scholarly book Community is the Way: Engaged Writing and Designing for Transformative Change (2022), which reflects her passion for bridging academia with real-world impact. At Saint Joseph's University, she founded and serves as director for the Beautiful Social Research Collaborative (est. 2010), a community-engaged writing program that fosters social change through writing partnerships and has completed over 130 projects with organizations in Philadelphia and beyond.
She organizes and leads a summer community writing workshop in Northern New Mexico, focusing on how we can design for transformative change in our community projects, programs, and partnerships (2022, 2023, 2024). Aimée has also led invited workshops on community-led design at institutions such as the University Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University (2024). She has also shared her expertise by teaching multiple courses at the University of Victoria's Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) on "Visualizing Information: Where Data Meets Design" (2015, 2017, 2018).
Aimée extends an open invitation to collaborate with fellow scholars, students, and community members who are interested in working together to make a difference through community writing and design.
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Free and open-access, Community is the Way offers an equity-based approach to design research that builds bridges of understanding and support while charting a path toward transformative change. See reviews of the book in Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric and Composition Studies.
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I write Contemplative Communication because I believe that skillful and compassionate communication is the key to building healthy and nourishing relationships, businesses, and communities.
Jainab Tabassum Banu in Composition Studies, vol 50, no 3 (Fall 2022)
“Community is the Way is a crucial read for anyone who wishes to get involved in researching and teaching community-based scholarship and grow a deep and just sense of building a better and more constructive community.”
Workshops
Upcoming workshops in community-engaged writing and contemplative communication.
