She focuses on the Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies Programs at the institution. The award-winning author of The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles Against Urban Inequality, the History Network has declared Williams a Top Historian. Her research focuses include the history of low-income people’s lives and activism as well as the implications of race and gender inequality on urban space and policy. Williams received her PhD in history from the University of Pennsylvania in 1998 and her undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Maryland College Park in 1989, where she became that university's first black salutatorian in its then 187-year history.