Layli Phillips

Layli Phillips, who joined the Feminist Studies editorial collective in Summer 2007, is Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and Associated Faculty of African American Studies at Georgia State University. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Temple University in 1994, her M.S. in Psychology from Penn State University in 1991, and her B.A. from Spelman College, where she majored in Philosophy, in 1986. She is the editor of The Womanist Reader (Routledge, 2006), a comprehensive anthology documenting the first quarter century of womanist thought and the first-ever text to focus on womanism “on its own.” She is currently completing a follow-up monograph entitled The Womanist Idea. From 1994-2000, she served as Founding Co-Director of the Womanist Studies Consortium, a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowships Residency Program, and Founding Co-Editor of the journal The Womanist (later Womanist Theory & Research).

In addition to researching womanism, Africana sexualities, and women and hip hop, Layli also conducts biographical research on Drs. Kenneth B. and Mamie P. Clark and writes on liberation psychology. Emerging interests include applied womanism and spiritual activism. Her research articles can be found in journals as diverse as Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Sexuality and Culture, Women and Therapy, History of Psychology, The Journal of African American History, The Journal of African American Studies, and Identities, as well as numerous edited volumes. She teaches courses in womanism, Black feminist thought, Africana queer studies, women and hip hop, and the U.S. Social Forum. She is an active member of the National Women’s Studies Association and has served in numerous leadership roles, most notably Facilitatorship of the Women of Color Leadership Project from 2000-2005.

At the community level, she serves on the Advisory Council of the Atlanta Women’s Foundation’s “Faith, Feminism, and Philanthropy” project, a $600,000 initiative to bring feminists and members of various faith communities into conversation and shared social justice projects. As part of this initiative, she co-designed and co-taught a 10-week community education course addressing womanist, feminist, sacred, and secular perspectives on women’s economic justice and empowerment. In addition, she is affiliated with the International Feminist University Network (IFUN), an organization committed to establishing an international feminist “multiversity” that brings women from different sectors together to share knowledge. Since 2006, Layli has also served on the Ms. magazine Committee of Scholars/Academic Project.