Chris Williams read Modern History at Balliol College, Oxford before taking his PhD at Cardiff University under the supervision of Professor Dai Smith. From 1988 until 2001 he was Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer in the School of History and Archaeology at Cardiff University. From 2001 until 2004 he was Professor and Director of the Centre for Modern and Contemporary Wales and Co-Director of the Centre for Border Studies at the University of Glamorgan. He joined the Swansea University as Professor of Welsh History in January 2005.

Professor Williams is the Director of Swansea's .

Current research

Professor Williams is currently completing Portrait of a British Town: Newport Society in 1851, to be published by the University of Wales Press. He is also working on The Victorians and the Alps and a pocket-guide to the mountains of Wales, and is co-editor of two volumes of the Gwent County History.

Principal publications

Books

• (ed., with Matthew Cragoe), Wales and War: Religion, Society and Politics in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007)
• (ed., with D. Tanner, W. P. Griffith & A. Edwards), Debating Nationhood and Government in Britain, 1885-1945: Perspectives from the 'Four Nations' (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006)
• (ed., with Jane Aaron), Postcolonial Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2005)
• (ed.), A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Britain (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004)
• (ed., with Bill Jones), B. L. Coombes, These Poor Hands: The Autobiography of a Miner Working in South Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002)
• (ed., with Duncan Tanner & Deian Hopkin), The Labour Party in Wales, 1900-2000 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000)
• (with Bill Jones), B. L. Coombes (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1999)
• (ed., with Bill Jones), With Dust Still In His Throat: A B. L. Coombes Anthology (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1999)
• Capitalism, Community and Conflict: The South Wales Coalfield, 1898-1947 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1998)
• Democratic Rhondda: Politics and Society, 1885-1951 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996)

Book-chapters & journal articles

• 'Taffs in the Trenches: Welsh National identiy and Military Service, 1914-1918', in M. Cragoe &  C. Williams, eds., Wales and War: Religion, Society and Politics in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007), 126-164
• 'The dilemmas of nation and class in Wales, 1914-1945', in D. Tanner, C. Williams, W. P. Griffith & A. Edwards, eds., Debating Nationhood and Government in Britain, 1885-1945: Perspectives from the 'Four Nations' (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 146-168
• 'The United Kingdom', in T. Baycroft & M. Hewitson (eds.), What is a Nation? Europe, 1789-1914  (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 272-292
• ' "That boundless ocean of mountains": British alpinists and the appeal of the Canadian Rockies, 1885-1920', International Journal of the History of Sport , 2 (2005), 70-87
• 'Problematizing Wales: an exploration in postcoloniality and historiography', in J. Aaron & C. Williams, eds., Postcolonial Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2005), 3-22
• 'British identities', in C. Williams, ed., A Companion to Nineteenth-CenturyBritain (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 534-552
• ' "Decorous and creditable"? The Irish in Newport’, in P. O. Leary, ed., Irish Migrants in Modern Wales (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2003), 54-82
• ' "The great hero of the Newport Rising”: Thomas Phillips, reform and Chartism', Welsh History Review, 21 (2003), 481-511

Principal research awards, fellowships & prizes

• British Academy, £4, 050 for 'J. M. Staniforth and the News of the World, 1893-1921', 2007
• British Academy Overseas Conference Grant for La Montagne entre image et langage dans les territoires anglophones: paysages écrits et paysages déchirés / The Mountain in Image and Word in the English-Speaking World: The Landscape Figured and Disfigured, Université de Toulouse - Le Mirail, 2007
• (with Stefan Berger), £601,000 from the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales to establish the Centre for Border Studies at the University of Glamorgan, 2003
• British Academy Overseas Conference Grant to attend Rush D. Holt conference at West Virginia University, 2003
• (with Duncan Tanner, R. Merfyn Jones, Will Griffith and Matthew Cragoe), £130,000 from the ESRC Devolution and Constitutional Change Programme for 'Welsh Devolution and Institutional Politics, 1885-1997’, 2002
• (with John Peters and Christine Peterkin), £7,830 from Higher Education Funding Council England History 2000 Project for research on 'Progression within modularity: student-centred learning’, 1997
• (with Duncan Tanner, R. Merfyn Jones and Rob Humphreys), £10,000 from the University of Wales for research on the Labour Party in Wales, 1900-2000, 1996
• (with Duncan Tanner), £4,000 from the University of Wales for research into electoral politics in Wales, 1868-1922, 1992
• University of Wales Prince Llywelyn ap Gruffydd Prize for best research thesis on the History of Wales and the Marches, 1988