Apryl Williams

Professional Title

Assistant Professor, Communication and Media & Digital Studies Institute

Department(s)

College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA)
Communication Studies
Digital Studies Institute

About

Apryl Williams is a jointly appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication & Media and the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan. She is also a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, a former Senior Fellow in Trustworthy AI at Mozilla, as well as an affiliated researcher at NYU's Center for Critical Race & Digital Studies. She is the author of Not My Type: Automating Sexual Racism in Online Dating, published with Stanford University Press. As a multidisciplinary scholar, Williams studies experiences of gender and race at the intersection of digital spaces and algorithmic technocultures. Williams' previous work has been published in leading interdisciplinary journals including Social Media + Society, Information, Communication & Society, the International Journal of Communication, and the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity. She also serves as Series Associate Editor of Emerald Studies in Media and Communications where she has co-edited five books on aspects of digital culture such as international media flows, digital inequalities, and digital publics. Her research has also been covered in popular press outlets including Time Magazine, Mic.com, Newsweek, Slate, BuzzfeedNews, NPR’s On the Media, and The Guardian.

Research Interests

humanities
social sciences
qualitative research
digital studies
ethnicity
LGBTQ
sexual harassment/gender harassment
sexuality
violence (sexual/gender/other)
ethnography
media