Sarah Williams is a specialist in the field of nineteenth and twentieth-century cultural history. She is a passionate and committed teacher who is much loved by her students. She thinks deeply about pedagogy and classroom practice and is devoted to telling the story of the Church to diverse audiences all over the world. 

She trained as an historian at the University of Oxford, where she subsequently taught as Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Harris Manchester College, Lecturer at Trinity College and Praelector at Lincoln College. At Oxford she taught British and European political and cultural history from 1685 to 1939 and supervised graduates working on nineteenth and early-twentieth-century religion and culture in the British context. After seventeen years at Oxford, in 2005 Dr Williams moved with her family to Vancouver, Canada, where she taught the History of Christianity. 

Dr Williams has written and edited numerous articles and books, including the acclaimed monograph Religious Belief and Popular Culture; 1880-1939 (OUP). Most recently her work includes The Spirituality of Time in which she develops her ongoing work on historical consciousness, pedagogy, and incarnational theology. She has written an historical novel and is currently working on a second, and she is also author of a widely read spiritual autobiography entitled The Shaming of the Strong, in which she reflects theologically on contemporary debates surrounding identity and personhood (now re-released as Perfectly Human: Nine Months with Cerian). She serves on editorial boards for a number of history journals and academic publishing houses.

When Dr Williams is not writing, she is reading – history books and literature. She lives with her husband Paul in the Cotswolds, close to the city of Oxford where she continues to work on her research and writing, teach students, and work collaboratively with colleagues in her research field. She is an active supporter of the pioneering Venn Foundation in New Zealand, and she returns regularly to teach at Regent College.