Welcome to Professor C. Phillips who will join the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the end of September 2025 as the faculty’s newly appointed The His Majesty Sultan Qaboos Bin Said Professor of Modern Arabic Studies.
Professor Phillips did her UG at the University of Oxford and obtained a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies in 2006 with a research thesis in intertextuality and experimentalism in modern Arabic literature. She is currently Associate Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature and Director of the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter.
She brings to our department of Middle Eastern Studies twenty years of experience as a teacher and scholar of Arabic literature and culture. She also comes with six years of experience in leadership, fundraising, global partnerships, and research and education strategy.
The aspects of the new role at Cambridge which most attract her include the breadth of literary specialism at FAMES, our exceptionally rich research environment, and the opportunity to work with leading scholars and talented students in the field. She has a deep commitment to promoting early career scholarship and her vision for modern Arabic studies at Cambridge involves developing new areas of interdisciplinary and cross-regional research with Asia and Africa and strengthening our research partnerships in the Gulf. Her research focuses on the intersections between religion, environment and literature and she is currently writing a book on Environment and Literature in Palestine.
Professor Phillips comments on the news of her appointment to Cambridge: “I am absolutely thrilled by the appointment. The His Majesty Sultan Qaboos Bin Said Professorship in Modern Arabic Studies has a key role to play in shaping the future of the field and I am hugely excited to be taking this forward with my new colleagues in FAMES.”