Angela Selena Williams

Dr. Angela Selena Williams serves as Affiliate Faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Center for Global Studies within the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, while also holding the position of Associate Director at the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. Her interdisciplinary work bridges gender studies, public policy, and cultural analysis.

Her educational background includes a PhD in Educational Policy Studies (2017) with dissertation on women's rights in MENA hip hop, plus MA (2009) and BA (2006) in Linguistics—all from UIUC. Her research examines how marginalized communities utilize art forms from hip hop to visual performance as knowledge production mechanisms.

Dr. Williams' publications reveal a consistent focus on cultural resistance, with her 2020 monograph analyzing women's representation in Middle Eastern hip hop and her 2010 chapter exploring linguistic localization in Egyptian rap. Her work demonstrates how artistic expression becomes a vehicle for political articulation in postcolonial contexts.

Her teaching includes GLBL 296: Women and Popular Culture in the Middle East and North Africa, where she examines how women use artistic mediums to navigate complex sociopolitical landscapes. Her research interests span gender studies, public policy, and art as emancipatory practice, with particular attention to women's artistic expressions in postcolonial contexts.