Patricia J. Williams

Patricia Williams, a University Distinguished Professor of Law and Humanities at Northeastern University, is a provocative pioneer in law, literature, and critical race theory movements in American legal theory. She holds a joint appointment between the School of Law and the Department of Philosophy and Religion in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities at Northeastern. She is also director of Law, Technology and Ethics Initiatives in the School of Law and the College of Social Sciences and Humanities.

Williams has published widely in the areas of race, gender, literature and law. Her books, including The Alchemy of Race and Rights, illustrate some of America’s most complex societal problems and challenge our ideas about socio-legal constructs of race and gender. Her work remains at the cutting edge of legal scholarship. Drawing on her prior interrogation of race, gender and personhood, Williams’ current research raises core questions of individual autonomy and identity in the context of legal and ethical debates on science and technology. Her work in the area of health and genetics, for example, questions how racial formation is shaped by the legal regulation of private industry and government. Her work on algorithms grapples with the auditing function of technology in our everyday lives — shaping how we understand who we are.