Apryl Williams

Apryl Williams is a jointly appointed Associate 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.

Current Research Areas: 

• race & representation
• race, gender + technology 
• technology + the body
• race + racism in online dating 
• reparative technology
• AI + relationships
• Human and AI intimacy 

Dr. Williams is not accepting doctoral students for this application cycle (fall 2027 cohort).