Dr. Brian Williams is an Assistant Professor of Geography in the Department of Geosciences at Mississippi State University. Dr. Williams affiliates faculty with African American Studies and is a member of the Gulf Scholars Program Faculty at MSU. A human geographer and political ecologist, his research is concerned with the ways that racism and social inequalities shape southern environments, landscapes, and spaces; as well as how individuals and communities make sense of and address socio-environmental injustices. He teaches courses ranging from Political Ecology, Cultural Geography, and Human Geography to Geographies of the United States South and Latin America. His work has been published in a wide range of scholarly journals including Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Dialogues in Human Geography, Southern Cultures, Environmental Humanities, and Nature & Space, and he currently serves as co-editor of the Southeastern Geographer.

Education

• PhD, The University of Georgia, Department of Geography, 2018
• MA, The Ohio State University, Department of Geography, 2013
• BA, University of Southern Mississippi, Department of Anthropology, 2008

Experience

• Postdoctoral Fellow, Dartmouth College, Department of Geography, 2018-2019

Research Interests

• Political ecology, environmental justice, food justice, health geography, science and technology studies, political geography, economic geography, historical geography, cultural geography, qualitative methodologies, agri-food systems, critical race and ethnic studies, Black geographies, environmental history, oral history, the U.S. South, Latin America.

Teaching Areas

• GR 4263/6263: Geographies of the U.S. South
• GR 2013: Human Geography
• GR 4133/6133: Political Ecology
• GR 4213/6213: Geography of Latin America
• GR/AN 8183: Culture, Place, and Space

• 2023         Williams B. “Monocultural crises and rural geographies”. Dialogues in Human Geography. (invited submission).
• 2023         Mansfield B, Werner M, Berndt C, Shattuck A, Galt R, Williams B, et al. (2023) A new critical social science research agenda on pesticides. Agriculture and Human Values: 1–18.
• 2023         Freshour C. and Williams B. “Toward ‘Total Freedom’: Black Ecologies of Land, Labor, and Livelihoods in the Mississippi Delta”. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 113(7): 1563–1572.
• 2023         Williams B. “Pesticides and Sustainability”. EBSCO Pathways to Research: Sustainability: 1–14.
• 2023         Shelton T. and Williams B. Making the Cotton District (White): Urban Renewal, New Urbanism, and the Construction of a Nostalgic Neo-Plantationist Pastiche. Annals of the American Association of Geographers (published online March 2023): 1–19.
• 2022         Williams, B. Cotton, Chemicals, and Agricultural Justice. In Turnipseed, C.S. (Ed.) Field Hollers and Freedom Songs: The Anthology (pp. 130-147).
• 2022         Williams B. and Porter J.M. “Cotton, Whiteness, and Other Poisons”. Environmental Humanities 14(3): 499-521.
• 2022         Brown, F. and Williams, B. “‘Heavy with Plenty’: Writing Abundance in the Plantationocene”. Southern Cultures. 28(4): 56-73.
• 2022         Williams B. and Freshour C. “Carceral geographies of pesticides and poultry”. Food and Foodways. 30(1–2). Routledge: 38–57.
• 2021         Williams, B.  “The Fabric of Our Lives”?: Cotton, Pesticides, and Agrarian Racial Regimes in the U.S. South. Annals of the American Association of Geographers.
• 2021         Williams, B., Van Sant, L., Moulton, A. A., & Davis, J. Race, Land, and Freedom. In M. Domosh, M. Heffernan, & C. W. J. Withers (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Historical Geography (pp. 179–198). SAGE Publications.
• 2020         Wright, W. J., McCreary, T., Williams, B., & Bledsoe, A. (2020). Race, Land, and the Law: Black Farmers and the Limits of a Politics of Recognition. In H. Garth & A. Reese (Eds.), Black Foodways (pp. 228–250).
• 2020         Freshour, C. & Williams, B. Abolition in the Time of Covid-19. 2020. Antipode Online. (April 2020)
• 2020         Williams, B., and M. Riley. 2020. The Challenge of Oral History to Environmental History. Environment and History 26 (2):207–231.