Dr Ros Williams (she/they)

BA, MA, PhD

School of Sociological Studies, Politics and International Relations

Senior Lecturer in Digital Media and Society

Deputy Director of Research and Innovation

Associate Director, ESRC Digital Good Network

(They/Them or She/Her)

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 Department of Sociological Studies in 2016 as a Research Associate on the digital health self-monitoring project Tracking Ourselves?. From 2019-2023, Ros was a Wellcome Trust research fellow, exploring racialised bone marrow stem cell donor recruitment (Mix & Match). As of 2023, they act as Associate Director for the ESRC Digital Good Network.

Ros has been Associate Editor of the STS journal New Genetics and Society since 2020, and sits on the Social Sciences and Humanities Early Career Awards Interview Panel for Wellcome Trust’s Discovery Award scheme

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 (Hons) (Warwick)
MA (Warwick)
PhD (York)

Research interests

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

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.
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.
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. View this article in WRRO
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. View this article in WRRO
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, ---. 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, 68(6), 1161-1178. View this article in WRRO
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
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 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
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.

Chapters

Merz S & Williams R (2022) Valuing Racialised Bodies in the Neoliberal Bioeconomy In Back L & Solomos J (Ed.), Theories of Race and Racism: A Reader Routledge Student Readers
Williams R (2022) “I’ve Got People’s Spit All over Me!” Reflections on the Future of Life-Saving Stem Cell Donor Recruitment In Martin P, Liddiard K, Pearce W & de Saille S (Ed.), Being Human During COVID-19 (pp. 100-107). Bristol: Bristol University Press.
Williams R (2021) Science and Technology In Neal S, Murji K & Solomos J (Ed.), An Introduction to Sociology London: Sage.
Weiner K, Will C, Henwood F & Williams R (2021) Everyday Curation? Attending to Data, Records and Record Keeping in the Practices of Self-Monitoring In Burkhardt M, van Geenen D, Gerlitz C, Hind S, Kaerlein T, Lämmerhirt D & Volmar A (Ed.), Interrogating Datafication Towards a Praxeology of Data (pp. 141-166). Transcript Publishing
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

Williams R (2025) Haunting Biology : Book Forum. Medicine Anthropology Theory, 12(2), 1-23.
Williams R (2020) Now to imagine a different world? Race critical code studies. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.
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 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.
Williams R () Viral justice. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 1-2.

Conference proceedings papers

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

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 Do We Mean When We Talk About a Good Digital Society?. British Academy Discussion Papers: What are the possibilities of a good digital society?.

Preprints

Weiner K, Henwood F, Will C & Williams R () Self-Monitoring for Health: Questions for an Emerging Field.

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

Duration	Project title	Sponsor
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 of the Social Sciences and Humanities Early-Career Awards Interview Panel for Wellcome Trust’s Discovery Award scheme.
Since 2020, 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., which oversees 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.