Bridget Phillips (‘89) was one of the department’s outstanding students. Her UF program enabled her to spend a summer semester at Cambridge and to go on archeological expeditions to Austria. After finishing her honors thesis in history at UF, she began a Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in medieval European history. Tragically, she was murdered in her apartment early in her graduate studies in an unsolved case. To honor her passion for history, her family created the Bridget B. Phillips Endowed Student Scholarship Fund. Each year the award provides two students with funds to travel abroad for study or research. In the past several years, Bridget’s graduate student friend, Tim Dean (now professor of English at University of Illinois), has worked to expand the fund to sponsor the research Bridget valued through a term professorship. This year the Bridget Phillips student awardees are Isabella Troccoli and Fiorella Recchioni.
Isabella Troccoli began her travels in England where her brother (a history professor at the University of Manchester) introduced her to his colleagues and then brought her to libraries, universities and museums in four different cities. She then moved on to Italy where she researched at the American Academy, Sapienza University, and a number of museums. In Rome she “couldn’t have been happier” as she explored the Ancient City. Her research project examines how the superstition of the evil eye survived the Christianization of the Italian peninsula mostly intact, while most other pagan traditions were either eradicated or fully assimilated. She describes her project as part historical research in terms of the actual practice during late antiquity and the Middle Ages, as well as part anthropological research in how the practice remained compelling enough to rebuff Christianization and how the practice survives to the present day.
Fiorella Recchioni’s project centers on an unpublished memoir by Argentine military general Acdel Edgardo Vilas during the rule of the military junta in 1976 through 1983. He discusses his leadership in the first campaign of what the military would eventually call the “Dirty War” against subversion and provides valuable insights into the mindset of a military leader during a time that is reflected on as among the most cruel and tragic in Argentina’s history. Because of the Bridget Phillips award, Fiorella will have the opportunity in December 2025 to travel to Argentina and do archival research in both Buenos Aires and Bahia Blanca where she will have access to the many periodicals, military records and court documents that she needs to complete her project.
A summer abroad doing research can be life changing. If you would like to help the Phillips family and Tim Dean in supporting student research in the department and young scholars like Isabella and Fiorella, please visit the department’s giving page.