Dr. Shannen Dee Williams is Associate Professor of History at the University of Dayton. She is the author of Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle (Duke University Press, 2022),which was named a top five book published in religion by Publishers' Weekly in 2022. Subversive Habits also received the 2022 Letitia Woods Brown Award for Best Book in African American Women's History from the Association of Black Women Historians and the 2023 Wesley-Logan Prize for Outstanding Book in African Diaspora History from the American Historical Association and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.

A Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians and the first Black woman elected to the Executive Council of the American Catholic Historical Association, Williams authored the award-winning column, “The Griot’s Cross,” published by the Catholic News Service from 2020 to 2022. Dr. Williams is a co-founder of the Fleming-Morrow Endowment in African American History at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. In 2020, Williams also submitted successful proposals to establish the Mother Mary Lange Lecture in Black Catholic History at Villanova University, the Cyprian Davis, O.S.B. Prize through the American Catholic Historical Association and the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, and the Sylvanie Francoz Williams-Dr. Patricia Grey Awardin Black Catholic Women's History through the Association of Black Women Historians.