Benn Williams

Trained as an historian, Benn Williams embodies the "alt-ac" professional. After teaching at local colleges, he moved into administration starting with a small interdisciplinary graduate program (neuroscience). Currently, he oversees most of the Graduate College's internal fellowships and awards; serves as the institutional advisor and/or liaison for a number of external funding opportunities (Boren, CLS, DAAD, Fulbright, Fulbright-Hays, NSF GRFP); created or co-created three writing initiatives for graduate students (GC 512, GC513, and WriteON!); liaises with the Office of Financial Aid and UIC Advancement; and co-founded and ran the Digital Humanities Working Group.

Williams has helped UIC to be recognized in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 as a Fulbright Hispanic-Serving Institution Leader by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the 2020 Laspau University Award for UIC's "outstanding support and contribution in working with Laspau-administered scholarship grantees" with Laspau staff underscoring UIC's professionalism, responsiveness, humor, and volume of students helped.

As author and editor: Aukje Kluge and Benn E. Williams (eds.), Re-examining the Holocaust through Literature (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2009).

As collaborator and translator: Liora Israël and Guillaume Mouralis (eds.), Dealing with Wars and Dictatorships: Legal Concepts and Categories in Action, in collaboration with Valeria Galimi and Benn E. Williams (The Hague: TMC Asser Press, 2013)

• Alya Aglan and Emmanuelle Loyer, “‘Épuration’: History of a Word,” pp. 23-38.
• Sara Liwerant, “Humanity Seized by International Criminal Justice,” pp. 39-58.
• Jon Elster, “Transitional Justice as Universal Narrative,” pp. 77-82.
• Vanessa Voisin, “Law and the Soviet Purge: Domestic Renewal and International Convergences,” pp. 179-196.
• Sandrine Lefranc and Frédéric Vairel, “The Emergence of Transitional Justice as a Professional International Practice,” pp. 235-252.

As editor of the William L. Potter Publications series for the Center for French Colonial Studies, eight books including:

• B. Pierre Lebeau, Lucy Eldersveld Murphy, and Robert Wiederaenders, Plumbing the Depths of the Upper Mississippi Valley: Julien Dubuque, Native Americans, and Lead Mining, preface by B. Williams (2008);
• Anna Laurie Burns Servaes, La Guiannée: An Ethnographic Study of Franco-American Cultural Identity (co-edition with the University of Mississippi Press, 2015);
• Mark Walczynski, Inquietus: LaSalle in the Illinois Country (2019).

As translator: Laurent Joly, “French Bureaucrats and Anti-Jewish Persecution: The ‘Jewish Service’ of the Paris Police Prefecture, 1940-1944,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies vol. 33, no. 1 (Spring 2019): pp. 39-59. https://doi.org/10.1093/hgs/dcz013

As co-translator: Laurent Joly, “The Parisian Police and the Holocaust: Control, Round-ups, Hunt, 1940-4,” Journal of Contemporary History  vol. 55, no. 3 (2020): pp. 557–578. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022009419839774

As translator: Jacques Commaille, “In a Trouble World: A New System of Knowledge about Law?” in In the Realm of Corona Normativities. A Momentary Snapshot of a Dynamic Discourse, ed. Werner Gephart, Rechts als Kultur no. 23 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2020), pp. 61-66.

As translation editor: Christian Bessy, Expropriation by Law. Intellectual Property, Value and Labor. New Horizons in Institutional and Evolutionary Economics (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2024).

Unofficial liaison, Fulbright Foreign Student Program

National reviewer for the Critical Language Scholarship (first-round)

Staff Translator: Droit et Société. Théorie et sciences sociales du droit

Former national reviewer for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute Fellowships

Referee, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 2025

Referee, The City and History, 2020

Referee, French Forum, 2018

Referee, Electronic Book Review, 2015

Referee, German Studies Review, 2015

Editorial / technical assistance:

• Pascal Bonnard and Cécile Jouhanneau (eds.), "Governing the memories of communism in Eastern and Central Europe. Policy instruments and social practices," European Politics and Society 18:1 (2017) [thematic issue]
• William A. Hoisington, Jr., Jacques Lemaigre Dubreuil de Paris à Casablanca: Vingt ans d’engagements (1935-1955) (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2009)
• “Appendix 1” in James Cracraft, The Petrine Revolution in Russian Culture (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 2004), pp. 319-375.

University of Illinois Chicago (ABD)
Major field: Modern European History
Minor fields: Early Modern Germany, Modern Germany, History of Science & Medicine

Summer Institute on the Holocaust and Jewish Civilization, Holocaust Education Foundation – Northwestern University

Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan (France)
Graduate (DEA) program of study: Public Action and Contemporary Societies

University of Illinois Chicago, M.A.
Major field: Modern European History
Minor fields: French Revolution, Modern Germany

Université Stendhal-Grenoble 3 (France), DELF
Program of (unaffiliated) study: French Language and Culture

Karl-Ruprechts-Universität-Heidelberg (Germany), PNDS
Fields of study: German Language and Culture

North Central College (IL), B.A. magna cum laude
Major fields: Modern European Intellectual History; German

Grassroots soccer referee, 2023-

National Association of Fellowship Advisors (NAFA), member of both the Graduate Advisor and Region 14 subcommittees.

American Historical Association (AHA)

American Literary Translators Association (ALTA)

Western Society of French History