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Hannie Phillips

Hannie Phillips

Profile

I joined the University of Leeds School of English in October 2018 as a Postgraduate Researcher, and embarked on my PhD project 'Witnessing and Memorialising the Holocaust in the Poetry of Jon Silkin, Geoffrey Hill, and Tony Harrison'. I am supervised by Professor John Whale in the School of English and Dr Helen Finch in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies. My PhD is funded by the AHRC WRoCAH consortium.

I hold an MA in Modern and Contemporary Literature, Culture and Thought from the University of Sussex and a BA in English with Creative Writing from the University of Nottingham.

I am a Postgraduate Teaching Assistant in the School of English, teaching on a range of undergraduate modules. I am also a PhD Tutor for education outreach charity The Brilliant Club, teaching university-style modules to secondary school students.

My peer-reviewed publications include:

  • Phillips, Hannie, ‘The Role of Plants in Jon Silkin’s Holocaust Memorial Poems’, Textual Practice (2021), 1–16. DOI: 10.1080/0950236X.2021.1900375

This article can be read for free or you can download it with University access.

Research interests

My doctoral research focuses on the ways that the Holocaust has been memorialised by poets in Britain between 1960 and 2010. I am interested in Jon Silkin, Geoffrey Hill, and Tony Harrison as poets who were not first-hand witnesses of the Holocaust, but nonetheless attempt to remember and mourn victims of the Holocaust in their work. I am navigating an understanding of memorial poetics through theories of post-Holocaust memory. I am interested in theories of memory, witnessing, and trauma, engaging in the fields of Memory Studies and Holocaust Studies throughout my research project. My PhD seeks to take a theoretical approach to investigating non-victim Holocaust memorial poetry, using the “Leeds Poets” Jon Silkin, Geoffrey Hill, and Tony Harrison as case studies.

Qualifications

  • MA Modern and Contemporary Literature, Culture and Thought (University of Sussex)
  • BA English with Creative Writing (University of Nottingham)

Research groups and institutes

  • Language Centre