Dr Ryan Williams

Ryan Williams is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Queensland, Australia, with expertise in the sociology of religion, prison studies, and criminology. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, has held several research fellowships, and has received research funding from national schemes in the UK, Canada, and Australia. He has extensive fieldwork experience in UK prison and probation contexts and among Muslims in the community in SE Queensland. He is interested in how state power and its coercive institutions come to reshape people’s lives in sometimes negative, but also positive, ways; how religion, ideology and violence relate to meaning-making; and the racialised and environmental aspects of securitisation and radicalisation. He has a strong track record in working with national and international security and correctional agencies, and he advocates for stakeholder partnerships grounded in robust, strengths-based methods.