Natalie M. Phillips

Natalie M. Phillips is an Associate Professor of English at Michigan State University, affiliated with the Cognitive Science Program, and co-director of the Digital Humanities and Literary Cognition Lab (DHLC). Her research bridges 18th-century literature, cognitive science, and disability studies, with a focus on literary neuroscience and digital humanities. She pioneered interdisciplinary experiments using fMRI and eye-tracking to study literary reading’s cognitive dynamics.

Her research includes projects on Jane Austen’s narrative attention (collaborating with Stanford), poetry’s pleasures (with NYU), cross-cultural narrative perceptions of music (with Princeton and Chinese University of Hong Kong), and creativity during the pandemic. She also leads accessibility initiatives, including neurodiversity-focused art projects and an autobiography about her disability.

• Awards: Honors College Award (2014), Undergraduate Research Mentor (2014), CAL Alumni Award (2015).
• Grants: NSF, Mellon, Teagle, and Wallenberg Foundation support.

The DHLC’s work appears in Oxford, MIT, and Cambridge Presses, and has been featured by NPR and the BBC. Phillips teaches courses on literature and cognition, disability studies, and 18th-century fiction.

Her current book projects include Literary Neuroscience and the Aesthetics of the Brain and a memoir about living with a neurological disorder.