Phillips Awarded Lindsay Young Professorship
Denise Phillips, associate professor, associate head, and director of undergraduate studies in the UT Department of History, has been awarded a Lindsay Young Professorship.
Phillips’s research specializes in European history, specifically the history of science, agriculture expertise, and 18th and 19th-century Germany and Switzerland. Her first book, Acolytes of Nature: Science and Public Culture in Germany, was published in 2012, exploring social history and how the term “science” came to have a new meaning in Germany between 1770 and 1850.
She has also worked on numerous publications and journals. Most recently she co-authored “Roundtable: Integrating Environment and Empire in German History,” for German Studies Review, published in February 2025. Her work has been supported by the Fulbright Commission, the German Academic Exchange Service, the National Science Foundation and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation.
Phillips is currently working on her next book, which will focus on Jacob Guyer (also known as Kleinjogg), an 18th-century Swiss peasant described as a philosophical farmer and innovator of rural knowledge.
Established in 1980 by Knoxville lawyer Lindsay Young, these endowed professorships reward faculty who are outstanding teachers, researchers, and public servants. Ten awards are made each year: one in law, one in veterinary medicine, and eight in the humanities. This professorship will support Phillips in her pursuit of research on European history and influential trends in agricultural, intellectual, scientific history.
by Sloan Docekal