From 2009 to 2018 Philip Mead was the inaugural Chair of Australian Literature and Director of the Westerly Centre. He is currently Emeritus Professor. He taught units in Australian Literary Studies, at Honours level, and the English units in the Master of Curriculum Studies (English) course, a collaborative course between the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Education. He has also taught a MOOC, 'Australian literature: a rough guide' for the Coursera platform.

Philip’s research is at the intersections of national and transnational literary studies, cultural history and theory, poetics, literary education, literary regionalism, and digital humanities. He has led nationally competitive research and teaching grants, most recently the ALTC funded project, ‘Australian Literature Teaching Survey’ (2009), the ARC Discovery Project grant for 2010-2012, ‘Monumental Shakespeares: an investigation of transcultural commemoration in 20th-century Australia and England' (with Gordon McMullan, King's College London), and the OLT funded Extension project ‘Update and Expansion of the AustLit Resource Teaching with AustLit site’ (2013-2014). He is also CI on the ARC Discovery Project grant for 2016-19, 'Investigating literary knowledge in the education of English teachers' (with Larissa McLean Davies and Lyn Yates, University of Melbourne, Brenton Doecke, Deakin University, and Wayne Sawyer, Western Sydney University). He is on the board of management of the ARC LIEF funded AustLIt consortium.

Philip is also currently an Australasian team leader for the German BMBF (German Federal Ministry of Education and Research)/DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service)-funded, and University of Tübingen-led, International Thematic Network 'Literary Cultures of the Global South' (2015-18) which includes participants and partners in Germany, Africa, Latin America, India and Australasia.

Philip supports Westerly magazine and UWA's outreach to international sites of Australian Studies research and collaboration in the UK, Europe, the US, India and China. He is also Associate Editor of English in Australia.

In 2009-2010 Philip was Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack Visiting Chair of Interdisciplinary Australian Studies at the Free University, Berlin, and for 2015-2016 he was Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University. In 2009 his book Networked Language: History & Culture in Australian Poetry was shortlisted for the Association for Australian Literature’s Walter McRae Russell Award, and in 2010 it won the New South Wales Premier’s Prize for Literary Scholarship.

From 2017 to 2020 Philip was a member of the Australian Research Council's College of Experts.

Director, Westerly Centre
AustLit Advisory Board
Convenor, Digital Humanities Research Seminar
Board member, Perth International Arts Festival
Research Integrity Advisor
Managing Co-editor, Journal of Poetics Research
Australian Environmental Humanities Hub
Editorial Advisory Board, Australian Literary Studies
Editorial Board, Sydney University Press Studies in Australian Literature
Editorial Advisory Board, Cultural Studies Review
Editorial Advisory Board, Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature
Editorial Advisor, Contemporary Foreign LIterature (China)
Editorial Board, Anthem Australian Humanities Research
Academic Advisory Board, Cordite Poetry Review
Editorial Board, Australian Cultural Studies (Shanghai)

Lockie Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and Australian Literature, University of Melbourne
Associate Professor in English, University of Tasmania