Patricia Phillippy

Patricia Phillippy is Professor of Material and Cultural Memories at Coventry University's Research Centre for Arts, Memory and Communities. She joined Coventry in 2020 after teaching at Texas A&M University for several years. As a leading scholar in early modern literature and culture, she currently holds a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (2023-2026) for her project 'A Floating World: Memory, Climate, and Race in the British Atlantic World.'

Phillippy received her PhD in Renaissance Studies from Yale University and holds a BA and MA in Poetry from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. Her scholarly journey spans international academic activities, including serving as Senior Editor of the Sixteenth Century Journal and membership in the Arts and Humanities Research Council's Peer Review College.

Her research specializes in early modern women's writing, premodern climate change, manuscript studies, material artifacts, and critical medical humanities. She approaches early modern English literature through comparative and transdisciplinary perspectives that situate archival and material culture studies within feminist materialist and posthumanist frameworks. Her work examines the intersections of gender, memory, embodiment, and environmental conditions in the early modern period.

Analysis of her recent publications reveals a consistent trajectory connecting material culture with memory studies, particularly examining how climate change, mortality, and gender intersect in early modern contexts. Her scholarship demonstrates sophisticated interdisciplinary approaches that bridge literary studies with environmental history, medical humanities, and material culture studies, often focusing on women's experiences and creative expressions.

• Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (2023-2026)
• Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
• Senior Editor, Sixteenth Century Journal
• Member, Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College

Professor Phillippy actively supervises PhD projects in early modern English literature and material culture, with particular interest in practice-based, transdisciplinary projects in creative writing and visual arts. Her research has been funded by prestigious organizations including the Leverhulme Trust, Folger Shakespeare Library, and Renaissance Society of America. She serves as an international voice in early modern studies, connecting historical scholarship to contemporary concerns through innovative theoretical frameworks.

Her current work with the Research Centre for Arts, Memory and Communities focuses on the entanglements of memory, climate, and mortality in the early modern Atlantic world, employing a critical medical humanities approach to explore how women's memorial works responded to changing environmental and social conditions during the colonial era.