Dr Elizabeth M. Williams
Dr. Elizabeth M. Williams is an academic librarian and historian with over two decades of experience in the profession. She currently serves as Associate Director of Library Academic Support at the University of Edinburgh, UK. In this role, she leads a team that provides dedicated support to students and academic staff across the College of Science and Engineering, the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine, and the College of Arts, Humanities and the Social Sciences.
Dr. Williams is also an accomplished historian whose research explores themes of race, protest, and transnational solidarity. Her monograph, The Politics of Race in Britain and South Africa: Black British Solidarity with the Anti-Apartheid Struggle (Bloomsbury, 2017), investigates the complex historical relationship between Britain and South Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a focus on the years leading up to and following the introduction of apartheid.
Her forthcoming edited volume, Black Britain and Nelson Mandela: Pulling the Branch of a Tree (Bloomsbury, 2025), brings together leading scholars to examine how Black Britain engaged with Nelson Mandela as a global symbol of resistance—through the lenses of law, theology, migration, popular culture, biography, geopolitics, protest politics, and more. The volume explores Mandela’s enduring influence on struggles against racial injustice in Britain and internationally.
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