Dr Ros Williams

BA, MA, PhD

School of Sociological Studies, Politics and International Relations

Senior Lecturer in Digital Media and Society

Associate Director, ESRC Digital Good Network

Dr Ros Williams
Profile picture of Dr Ros Williams
r.g.williams@sheffield.ac.uk
The Wave

Full contact details

Dr Ros Williams
School of Sociological Studies, Politics and International Relations
The Wave
2 Whitham Road
Sheffield
S10 2AH
Profile

Ros’ work spans across Science and Technology Studies (STS), critical media studies, sociologies of race and ethnicity, and of health and illness.

Ros joined the university in 2016 as a postdoctoral researcher on a Leverhulme-funded digital health project. From 2019-2023, Ros led a Wellcome Trust early career fellowship, exploring racialised bone marrow stem cell donor recruitment. As of 2023, they act as Associate Director for the ESRC Digital Good Network. They are also a co-invesigator on the Yorkshire Cancer Research-funded E-Immune programme.

Ros is writing a book, due for release in Autumn 2027 with University of Minnesota Press on racial inequity in the global blood stem cell infrastructure.

Ros previously worked at the University of Warwick as a Teaching Fellow, teaching quantitative and qualitative research methods, material on science and society, and social theory. Their PhD was awarded by the Science and Technology Studies Unit (SATSU) at the University of York in 2016. Ros was supervised by Professor Nik Brown and wrote a thesis exploring the ‘archival practices’ of contemporary public-use stem cell tissue banking and the transitory nature of biomedical standards.

Since 2024, Ros has been Editor at the journal Sociology of Health and Illness and, before this (2020-2023), acted as Associate Editor of the STS journal New Genetics and Society. Ros chaired the Social Sciences and Humanities Early Career Awards Interview Panel for Wellcome Trust’s Discovery Award scheme (2023-26), having previously sat on the panel as an interviewer (2022-23).

Qualifications
  • BA hon(1:1) Sociology and Gender Studies, University of Warwick.
  • MA (dist) Social Research, University of Warwick.
  • PhD Sociology, University of York.
Research interests

Previous research has explored intersections between health, race and social media, focusing on Black, minority ethnicity and mixed raced stem cell donor recruitment in the UK (funded by the Wellcome Trust) and racialised biomedical recruitment activity (funded by the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness).

My PhD was awarded by the Science and Technology Studies Unit (SATSU) at the University of York. The thesis, defended in 2015, explored the ‘archival practices’ of contemporary public-use stem cell tissue banking and the transitory nature of biomedical standards. Focused on umbilical cord blood stem cell banking in particular, I developed an interest in the use of race classifications, legacies of health care inequity, and genetic understandings of racial differences in blood and tissue.

I published a number of papers based on this research before coming to Sheffield to work on Dr Kate Weiner’s Leverhulme project on self-monitoring technologies and everyday practices of self-care, through which I developed an interest in the use of digital technologies for health practices and digital health platforms more broadly.

Publications

Edited books

  • Williams R & Hollin G (Ed.) (2022) Complicity: Methodologies of power, politics and the ethics of knowledge production. Oxford: Wiley.

Journal articles

  • Williams R (2026) . Body and Society.
  • Smart A, Williams R, Weiner K, Cheng L & Sobande F (2024) . Sociology of Health and Illness.
  • Hollin G & Williams R (2022) . Sociology of Health & Illness, 44(S1), 1-21.
  • Weiner K, Henwood F, Andrews J, Will C & Williams R (2022) . Science & Technology Studies, 36(2).
  • Williams R (2022) . Sociology of Health and Illness, 44(7), 1114-1131.
  • Williams R (2021) . BioSocieties, 16(4), 470-491.
  • Will C, Henwood F, Weiner K & Williams R (2020) . Social Science and Medicine, 266, ---.
  • Fitzgerald D, Hinterberger A, Narayan J & Williams R (2020) . The Sociological Review, 68(6), 1161-1178.
  • Williams R, Will C, Weiner K & Henwood F (2020) . Information, Communication and Society, 23(8), 1170-1186.
  • Weiner K, Will C, Henwood F & Williams R (2020) . Big Data and Society, 7(1), 1-15.
  • Williams RG, Weiner K, Henwood F & Will C (2020) . Critical Public Health, 30(1), 28-40.
  • Merz S & Williams RG (2018) . New Political Economy, 23(5), 560-573.
  • Williams RG (2018) . Science As Culture, 27(1), 24-43.
  • Williams RG (2017) . Technology Analysis & Strategic Management.
  • Brown N & Williams R (2015) . Life Sciences, Society and Policy, 11(1), 1-18.
  • Williams R (2015) . New Genetics and Society, 34(3), 319-337.

Book chapters

  • Weiner K, Will C, Henwood F & Williams R (2022) , Interrogating Datafication (pp. 141-166). transcript Verlag
  • Merz S & Williams R (2022) , Theories of Race and Racism (pp. 780-795). Routledge
  • Williams R (2022) “I’ve Got People’s Spit All over Me!”: Reflections on the Future of Life- Saving Stem Cell Donor Recruitment, Being Human During Covid 19 (pp. 100-107).
  • Williams R (2021) Science and technology In Murji K, Neal S & Solomos J (Ed.), An Introduction to Sociology London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
  • Merz S & Williams R (2021) ‘We All Have a Responsibility to Each Other’: Valuing Racialised Bodies in the Neoliberal Bioeconomy In Tilley L & Shilliam R (Ed.), Raced Markets Routledge

Book reviews

  • Engel T, Greenhough B, Keck F, Williams R, Evans M, Hegerty B & Kowal E (2025) . Medicine Anthropology Theory, 12(2), 1-23.
  • Williams R (2024) . Ethnic and Racial Studies, 47(3), 643-645.
  • Williams R (2020) . Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 6(4), 569-571.
  • Williams R (2017) . Theory Culture & Society, 34(7-8), 265-268.
  • Williams R (2016) . Ethnic and Racial Studies, 39(13), 2485-2487.
  • Williams RG (2015) . Political Studies Review, 13(3), 396-396.
  • Williams RG (2015) . Sociology of Health & Illness, 37(5), 801-802.
  • Williams RG (2014) . Political Studies Review, 12(2), 255-255.
  • Williams RG (2014) . Sociology, 48(2), 417-418.

Conference proceedings

  • Snooks K, Williams R & Richards D (2025) . Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (pp 3062-3081)

Digital content

  • Williams R (2026) . Retrieved from

Working papers

  • Tinsman C, Gina N, Kennedy H, Goddard D, Williams R, Patel R, Richards D, Corpus Ong J, Millings A, Jones R , Hale S et al (2025) Evaluating the societal outcomes of digital technologies: building blocks and reflexive questions.
  • Digital Good Network , Hale S, Jones R, Kennedy H, Middlemass R, Millings A, Neff G, Ong JC, Patel R, Richards D , Snooks K et al (2024) . British Academy Discussion Papers: What are the possibilities of a good digital society?.
  • Weiner K, Henwood F, Will C & Williams R (2017) .
Research group
  • Ros is co-leader of the Science, Technology and Medicine in Society (STeMiS) research theme in the Department.
  • She is also an executive member of the interdisciplinary research institute . 
Grants
DurationProject titleSponsor
2025-2030 Yorkshire Cancer Research
2022-27ESRC
2019-23Social Sciences and Humanities Research Fellowship - Mix and match: Constituting racialised communities in UK stem cell donation.The Wellcome Trust
2021-22Secondment Fellowship - Kept on Ice: Exploring international blood stem cell donor perspectives on the practice of unanticipated cryopreservation. Hosted by Anthony Nolan stem cell registry.The Wellcome Trust
2021-2022 White Rose Collaboration Fund : a framework for understanding social dynamics in and beyond a pandemic. White Rose University Consortium
2021-2024Contextualising and transforming support for minoritised blood cancer patients in the UK. PhD Collaborative award with Blood Cancer UK.ESRC White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership
2021-2024"Save Lives, Stay Home", or "Save a Life, Give Blood?": An exploration of NHS Blood and Transplant's public health messaging in the pandemic media ecology. PhD Collaborative award with NHS Blood and Transplant.AHRC White Rose College of Arts and Humanities
2022-2023Race to recruit: Understanding racialisation in biomedical science by exploring the enrolment of racialised minorities to UK clinical research and health interventions. (with Andy Smart, Kate Weiner and Francesca Sobande) Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness
Teaching interests

I convene the module Digital Health, a third year and PGT module, which looks at the social implications of digital technologies in health, considering what these mean for our experiences of health and illness as patients and as citizens, for the work of health care professionals, and for the provision of health care.

I also supervise undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations.

Teaching activities

I convene the module Digital Health, a third year and PGT module, which looks at the social implications of digital technologies in health, considering what these mean for our experiences of health and illness as patients and as citizens, for the work of health care professionals, and for the provision of health care.

I also supervise undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations.

Professional activities and memberships
  • Since 2026, Ros has been a member of UK charity and stem cell registry Anthony Nolan's Research Review Board, which assess and provide expert review of new research proposals at the charity.
  • From 2022-2026 Ros was a panel member and then Chair of the Social Sciences and Humanities Early-Career Awards Interview Panel for Wellcome Trust’s Discovery Award scheme.
  • Since 2024, Ros has been Editor of the journal Sociology of Health and Illness.
  • From 2020-2023, Ros has been associate editor of STS journal New Genetics and Society.
  • From 2018-2021, Ros was co-convenor of the British Sociological Association's STS Study Group, overseeing abstract selection and delivery of the STS/digital streams at the BSA's annual conference.
  • From 2016-2019, Ros sat on the executive committee of AsSIST-UK which supports transdisciplinary collaboration across the social sciences, humanities and sciences in the field of science, technology and innovation studies.
Postgraduate Supervision

Ros welcomes PhD supervision enquiries and is particularly interested to hear from individuals interested in exploring aspects of race and ethnicity, mixed raced identities, inequitable health access, tissue (blood, organ and cell) donation, and various aspects of digital health.