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

r.g.williams@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 6423

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.

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 currently chairs 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).

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.

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

Smart A, Williams R, Weiner K, Cheng L & Sobande F (2024) Ethico-racial positioning in campaigns for COVID-19 research and vaccination featuring public figures.. Sociology of Health and Illness.
Hollin G & Williams R (2022) Complicity: Methodologies of power, politics and the ethics of knowledge production. Sociology of Health & Illness, 44(S1), 1-21. View this article in WRRO
Weiner K, Henwood F, Andrews J, Will C & Williams R (2022) The logics of invited and uninvited material participation: bringing blood pressure self-monitoring into the clinic. Science & Technology Studies, 36(2). View this article in WRRO
Williams R (2022) “Improving the odds for everybody” : narrative and media in stem cell donor recruitment patient appeals, and the work to redress racial inequity. Sociology of Health and Illness, 44(7), 1114-1131.
Williams R (2021) “It’s harder for the likes of us” : racially minoritised stem cell donation as ethico-racial imperative". BioSocieties, 16(4), 470-491.
Will C, Henwood F, Weiner K & Williams R (2020) Negotiating the practical ethics of ‘self-tracking’ in intimate relationships: Looking for care in healthy living. Social Science and Medicine, 266, ---.
Fitzgerald D, Hinterberger A, Narayan J & Williams R (2020) Brexit as heredity redux: Imperialism, biomedicine and the NHS in Britain. The Sociological Review, 68(6), 1161-1178.
Williams R, Will C, Weiner K & Henwood F (2020) Navigating standards, encouraging interconnections : infrastructuring digital health platforms. Information, Communication and Society, 23(8), 1170-1186.
Weiner K, Will C, Henwood F & Williams R (2020) Everyday curation? Attending to data, records and record keeping in the practices of self-monitoring. Big Data and Society, 7(1), 1-15.
Williams RG, Weiner K, Henwood F & Will C (2020) Constituting practices, shaping markets: remaking healthy living through commercial promotion of blood pressure monitors and scales. Critical Public Health, 30(1), 28-40.
Merz S & Williams RG (2018) ‘We all have a responsibility to each other’: valuing racialised bodies in the neoliberal bioeconomy. New Political Economy, 23(5), 560-573. View this article in WRRO
Williams RG (2018) Enactments of race in the UK’s blood stem cell inventory. Science As Culture, 27(1), 24-43. View this article in WRRO
Williams RG (2017) Bloody infrastructures!: Exploring challenges in cord blood collection maintenance. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management.
Brown N & Williams R (2015) Cord blood banking – bio-objects on the borderlands between community and immunity. Life Sciences, Society and Policy, 11(1), 1-18.
Williams R (2015) Cords of collaboration: interests and ethnicity in the UK's public stem cell inventory. New Genetics and Society, 34(3), 319-337.
Williams R () Mixed race bodies and biomedicine: the relational politics of blood stem cells. Body and Society.

Book chapters

Weiner K, Will C, Henwood F & Williams R (2022) Everyday Curation? Attending to Data, Records and Record Keeping in the Practices of Self-Monitoring, Interrogating Datafication (pp. 141-166). transcript Verlag
Merz S & Williams R (2022) Valuing Racialised Bodies in the Neoliberal Bioeconomy, 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. View this article in WRRO
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) Haunting Biology: Book Forum. Medicine Anthropology Theory, 12(2), 1-23.
Williams R (2024) Viral Justice. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 47(3), 643-645. View this article in WRRO
Williams R (2020) Now to imagine a different world? Race critical code studies. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 6(4), 569-571.
Williams R (2017) Review: Alexej Ulbricht, Multicultural Immunisation: Liberalism and Esposito. Theory Culture & Society, 34(7-8), 265-268.
Williams R (2016) The social life of DNA: race, reparations, and reconciliation after the genome. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 39(13), 2485-2487.
Williams RG (2015) Book Review: Political Theory: Biopolitics: A Reader. Political Studies Review, 13(3), 396-396.
Williams RG (2015) Happe, K.E. The Material Gene: Gender, Race, and Heredity after the Human Genome Project. New York: New York University Press. 2013. vii + 288pp £16.99 (pbk) ISBN 978‐0‐8147‐9068‐7. Sociology of Health & Illness, 37(5), 801-802.
Williams RG (2014) Book Review: Political Theory: Immunitas: The Protection and Negation of Life. Political Studies Review, 12(2), 255-255.
Williams RG (2014) Book Review: Catherine Bliss, Race Decoded: The Genomic Fight for Social Justice. Sociology, 48(2), 417-418.

Conference proceedings

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

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. View this article in WRRO
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) What Do We Mean When We Talk About a Good Digital Society?. British Academy Discussion Papers: What are the possibilities of a good digital society?.
Weiner K, Henwood F, Will C & Williams R (2017) Self-Monitoring for Health: Questions for an Emerging Field. View this article in WRRO

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 iHuman.

Grants

Duration	Project title	Sponsor
	E-IMMUNE	Yorkshire Cancer Research
2022-27	The Digital Good Network	ESRC
2019-23	Social Sciences and Humanities Research Fellowship - Mix and match: Constituting racialised communities in UK stem cell donation.	The Wellcome Trust
2021-22	Secondment 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. https://vitalcirculations.org/	White Rose University Consortium
2021-2024	Contextualising 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
2022-2023	Race 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 activities

I have previously convened undergraduate modules for the department's Digital Media and Society course, including 'Advancing with Digital Methods', 'Sociology of the Media', and 'Work Placement'.

I am not currently teaching in the Department, but occasionally deliver guest lecture content and provide some MA dissertation supervision. If you're a student with specific questions about content I've delivered, please do send me an email.

Professional activities and memberships

Since 2022, Ros has been a 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.