Dr Ros Williams

BA, MA, PhD

Department of Sociological Studies

Lecturer in Digital Media and Society

Wellcome Trust Research Fellow.

Research Theme Co-Leader for Science Technology and Medicine in Society.

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

Elmfield Building

Full contact details

Dr Ros Williams
Department of Sociological Studies
Elmfield Building
Northumberland Road
Sheffield
S10 2TU

Profile

Ros joined the Department of Sociological Studies in 2016 as a Research Associate on a digital health self-monitoring project. In 2018, she became a Lecturer in Digital Media and Society. She has a wider interest in Science and Technology Studies (STS), social theory, race, and health equity.

Ros is Associate Editor of the STS journal New Genetics and Society. She is also currently on the executive committee of AsSIST-UK which supports transdisciplinary collaboration across the social sciences, humanities and sciences in the field of science, innovation and technology, and co-convenes the British Sociological Association's STS Study Group.

She previously worked at the University of Warwick as a Teaching Fellow where she taught quantitative and qualitative research methods, material on science and society, and social theory. Her 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 (Hons) (Warwick)
MA (Warwick)
PhD (York)

Research interests

My research engages with Science and Technology Studies (STS), digital sociology, and the sociologies of race and ethnicity – particularly the intersection of racialisation and biomedical science.

I am currently on a period of extended research leave to undertake Mix and Match, a three-year Wellcome Trust Social Science and Humanities Research Fellowship. Begun in September 2019, this project explores intersections between health, race and social media, focusing on Black, minority ethnicity and mixed raced stem cell donor recruitment in the UK.

Using a mixed methods approach that incorporates ethnography and social media analysis, I am looking at the use of donation drives and social media campaigns which focus on encouraging minoritised people to register as potential stem cell donors. I am working with several third sector organisations in this project.

My doctoral research was completed at the University of York. The thesis, defended in 2015, focused on umbilical cord blood stem cell banking. Here, 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

Journal articles

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. View this article in WRRO
Fitzgerald D, Hinterberger A, Narayan J & Williams R (2020) Brexit as heredity redux: Imperialism, biomedicine and the NHS in Britain. The Sociological Review. View this article in WRRO
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). View this article in WRRO
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. View this article in WRRO
Merz S & Williams RG (2018) ‘We All Have a Responsibility to Each Other’: Valuing Racialised Bodies in the Neoliberal Bioeconomy. New Political Economy(Raced Markets Special Issue). View this article in WRRO
Williams R (2017) Review: Alexej Ulbricht, Multicultural Immunisation: Liberalism and Esposito. Theory, Culture & Society, 34(7-8), 265-268. View this article in WRRO
Williams RG (2017) Bloody infrastructures!: Exploring challenges in cord blood collection maintenance. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management. View this article in WRRO
Williams RG (2017) Enactments of Race in the UK’s Blood Stem Cell Inventory. Science As Culture, 27(1), 24-43. View this article in WRRO
Williams R (2016) The social life of DNA: race, reparations, and reconciliation after the genome. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 39(13), 2485-2487.
Brown N & Williams R (2015) Cord blood banking – bio-objects on the borderlands between community and immunity. Life Sciences, Society and Policy, 11(1). View this article in WRRO
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 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.
Will C, Henwood F, Weiner K & Williams R () Negotiating the practical ethics of ‘self-tracking’ in intimate relationships: looking for care in healthy living. Social Science and Medicine.

Book reviews

Williams R (2020) Now to imagine a different world? Race critical code studies. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.

Research group

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.

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

2019-22 Title: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Fellowship - Mix and match: Constituting racialised communities in UK stem cell donation.
- Sponsor: The Wellcome Trust

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

Since 2020, Ros has been co-editor of STS journal New Genetics and Society.
Ros is a co-convenor of the British Sociological Association's Science and Technology Studies (STS) study group, which oversees abstract selection and delivery of the STS/digital streams at the BSA's annual conference.