Rachel Elizabeth Williams is a scholar and writer from southeastern Louisiana and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

With an expansive view of home, the Black southern roots that ground her research agenda and writing projects flow from southern towns connected along I-10, that touch the Mississippi River (Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana) and the Gulf of Mexico (Biloxi, Mississippi).

Her research and writing focuses on issues at the intersection of race, place, and capitalism. Her academic work draws from Black Studies and Geography to examine the privatization of education (charter schools) in relationship to shifting metropolitan landscapes, capital, and Black power and politics. In her current project, she traces 21st century educational reforms in Memphis, Tennessee, a majority Black southern city following the post-Katrina New Orleans model of state takeover and charter schools.

Her writing projects blend scholarly and embodied knowledge to examine issues at the intersection of pop culture, politics, and political economic analysis.

She has maintained a foot in the policy world by participating in and then leading an education policy fellowship as thr Oakland Regional Director of the Urban Leaders Fellows. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Her work has been published in Urban Education, The Review of Black Political Economy, and The American Journal of Education.