Faculty Profile

Mona Taylor Phillips, Ph.D., is a professor of sociology at Spelman College, and chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. She also coordinates the Ida B. Wells-Barnett/Social Justice Distinguished Lecture and Performance Series, as well as the College’s First-Year Interdisciplinary Big Question Seminars. Dr. Phillips also served as director of the Teachings Resource and Research Center for five years. 

Dr. Phillips received her Bachelor of Arts from Spelman College in 1976, and Master of Arts and doctorate from The University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Dr. Phillips has spent a good portion of her professional life engaged in research about the social contexts of Black women's health, with a particular focus on women's experiencing of psychosocial stressors during pregnancy. She has served as principal investigator and co-principal investigator of several NIHCHD research ethnographic projects, and her publications have appeared in The Journal of Child and Maternal Health, Ethnicity and Disease, Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, American Journal of Health Studies, and The American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Dr. Phillips was selected to be a Pew-Carnegie Scholar with The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and her Carnegie Foundation project is often cited by other professionals who are interested in advancing best practices in teaching and learning in higher education. Dr. Phillips’ research about pedagogy has appeared in the edited volumes "Opening Lines: Approaches to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning" (editor: Pat Hutchings), and Included in "Sociology: Learning Climates that Cultivate Racial and Ethnic Diversity" (Editors: Chin, Berheide and Rome).  

She has an essay in the soon-to-be published, Well-Being and Higher Education: A Strategy for Change in the Realization of Education’s Greater Purposes (AAC&U, Donald W. Harward, editor) of Child and Maternal Health, Ethnicity and Disease, Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, American Journal of Health Studies, and The American Journal of Preventive Medicine.