Linda M. Williams, PhD

Linda M. Williams, Ph.D., is a senior research scientist and director of the Justice and Gender-Based Violence Research Initiative at the Wellesley Centers for Women. The focus of her current work is on the justice system response to sexual violence, commercial sexual exploitation of women and children, human trafficking, intimate partner violence, child maltreatment, and prevention of sexual violence on college campuses. Williams returned to WCW after serving as a professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell (2005-2015), where she is now Professor Emerita.

Author of many books and scholarly publications, Williams has lectured internationally on sexual violence, commercial sexual exploitation, trauma & memory, and researcher-practitioner collaborations. She served as an invited expert for the first international expert meeting on domestic sex trafficking under the auspices of the National Rapporteur on Trafficking in Human Beings and Sexual Violence against Children in The Hague, Netherlands, and on the National Research Council Panel on Violence Against Women.

For the past 42 years, Williams has directed research on violence against women, sexual exploitation of children, sex offenders, and the consequences of child abuse. She has been the principal investigator on 16 U.S. federally funded research projects (and has directed research funded by the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, the National Institute of Mental Health, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of the Navy, and private foundations). 

Williams earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania where she studied at the Center for Criminology and Criminal Law. In 1996 Williams joined the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW) as director of research at the Stone Center. Until her departure in the fall of 2005, she continued her examination of the resilience of women, children, and families. She conducted research designed to understand and prevent the negative consequences of violence against women and children and collaborated on international research and action projects.