Dr. Mary Frances Phillips is an Associate Professor in the Department of African American Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is a historian and public intellectual. Dr. Phillips’s book, Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins (2025, NYU Press’ Black Power Series), is both a critical study and biography of Black Panther Party veteran Ericka Huggins, one of the longest-serving women members of the organization. Her book historicizes women’s prison organizing, resistance, and collision with law enforcement of women political prisoners. She has published journal articles in SOULS: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society; the Women’s Studies Quarterly; the Western Journal of Black Studies; Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men; and the Syllabus Journal.

Outside the academy, her essays have been featured in the Huffington Post, Ms. Magazine's blog, New Black Man (in Exile), Colorlines, Vibe Magazine, Black Youth Project, and the African American Intellectual History Society’s blog, Black Perspectives. Her work has garnered media attention in TIME Magazine, the New York Historical Museum and Library Women at the Center blog series, the Detroit Free Press, BronxNet Cable Television, Bronx News 12, WBAI Pacifica Radio, New York City, and WNPR, Connecticut Public Radio.