Temperature, concentration of the solvent and pressure are the parameters that are well known to bring about phase transitions in liquid crystalline systems. In recent years a new parameter has been added to this list: light. The ability of light to alter/stabilize a particular thermodynamic phase via the photoisomerization of the constituent molecules is an interesting tool to investigate condensed matter from a new dimension. In this talk I will describe our recent results on just two aspects of these non-equilibrium phase transitions: (i) In the case of the photo-induced isothermal nematic-isotropic transition, it is found that the time required for the system to achieve the photo-stationary state as well as to recover the original state after photo-irradiation, is a smooth function of the absolute temperature except in the vicinity of the transition; the behaviour is explained in terms of the order parameter excess between the equilibrium and photo-stimulated states. It is also found that the effect induced by photoisomerization can be suppressed by applying an external field. This novel method provides an accelerated means of recovering the equilibrium from the photo-driven state. The applied electric field is seen to make the recovery at least two orders of magnitude faster. (ii) Recently, we reported the first exception to an established phenomenon that the photo-induced transition always leads to a phase that in any case exists in the thermal cycle. A guest-host ternary mixture consisting of the photoactive guest molecules and not exhibiting smectic A phase, is seen to induce and stabilize the smectic A phase only in the presence of UV light. We have also mapped out hitherto unexplored temperature vs. UV intensity phase diagrams for various mixtures which illustrate that light mimics, in a limited sense, the role of a thermodynamic parameter like, e. g., pressure; these studies also suggest the possibility of observing a double critical point by employing the UV intensity as a fine-tuning parameter.