Christian A. Williams is an associate professor and historical anthropologist based at the University of the Free State. His research draws from archival and oral sources and ethnographic fieldwork to examine Southern Africa’s anti-colonial struggles and how they are remembered. Williams’s doctoral thesis (Michigan 2009) and first academic monograph (Cambridge 2015) examined exile camps administered by the Namibian liberation movement SWAPO in exile, arguing that violence perpetrated in camps shapes how people render history and practice nationalism across the region. He has also published widely on the interplay between anti-colonial nationalism, transnational solidarity, and Christian faith in late twentieth century Southern Africa, drawing from his most recent monograph on Salatiel Ailonga, a Namibian exile/refugee pastor (James Currey 2025). Williams’s current book project examines the early anti-apartheid movement through Namibian and South African exiles who studied at Lincoln University in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s.  These projects have been supported by several research grants, including awards from the United States Fulbright Program, South Africa’s National Research Foundation, and Germany’s Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

At the UFS, Williams teaches undergraduate courses wherein students examine how contemporary social identities in Southern Africa reflect histories of colonialism and anti-colonialism. He also supervises postgraduate students as they explore their own research interests under this broad theme. Like his own research, many of his students’ projects draw ethnographic fieldwork, oral history interviews, and archival documents into conversation with one another and initiate dialogue about how we may create the future in colonialism's aftermath.

Monographs:

Christian Faith and Namibian Liberation: An Ethnographic Biography of Salatiel Ailonga. James Currey and University of Namibia Press, 2025.

National Liberation in Postcolonial Southern Africa: A Historical Ethnography of SWAPO’s Exile Camps. Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Remembering St. Therese. Windhoek: Out of Africa Press, 2003.

Other Key Publications since 2020:

“Faith and Liberation in Tanzania: An Historical Ethnography of Salatiel Ailonga’s Bible.” South African Historical Journal, Special Issue: “World Anti-Apartheid Reconsidered”. (2026): 1-19 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02582473.2025.2600445

“Remember Mboroma? Narrating a Fragmented Exile Past via UNHCR and SWAPO Camps.” Memory Studies, Special Issue: “Camp Memories. Silencing, contesting and memorializing past encampments in Africa and beyond” 18, no. 5 (2025): 1233-1251. https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980251372493.

“SWAPO’s 1976 Crisis and Nordic Transnational Solidarities: The Ailongas’ Detainee Letters.” In Leila Koivunen and Raita Merivirta, eds. Colonial Aspects of Finnish-Namibian Relations (1870–1990). Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2024: 171-184. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21435/sfh.28.

“Liberation Movement Camps in Southern Africa.” In The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. Oxford University Press, 2024. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.1216.

“On South(ern) Africa’s Revolutionary Families.” Safundi, Roundtable on Paul Landau, Spear: Mandela and the Revolutionaries 25, nos. 3-4 (2024): on-line. DOI: 10.1080/17533171.2024.2412377.

“Defining and Aiding ‘the Namibian Refugee’: A History of the Chaplaincy to Namibians in Exile, 1974-76.” Canadian Journal of African Studies, Special Issue on African Refuge 55, no. 3 (2021): 543-561. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00083968.2020.1869049.

“Nationalism in Namibia.” Scholarly Review Essay. African Studies Review 63, no. 4 (2020): 927-937. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/asr.2020.89.

“African Refugee History.” African Studies Review, Forum on African Refugee History 63, no. 3 (2020): 560-567. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/asr.2020.76.

“SWAPO’s Struggle Children and Exile Home-Making: The Refugee Biography of Mawazo Nakadhilu.” African Studies Review, Forum on African Refugee History 63, no. 3 (2020): 593-615. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/asr.2019.89.

“Dissident Refugees: A History of 200 Namibians in Zambia, 1977-89.” Journal of Southern African Studies 46, no. 5 (2020): 863-879. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2020.1768685.

ANTC1624: Culture: Understanding Ourselves and Others (first-year)

ANTD2614: The Anthropology of Identity (second-year)

SCSCI 2612: Social Science in Africa (second-year)

ANTU3725, Unit 2: The Anthropology of Humanitarianism (third-year)

ANTI8644: The Anthropology of Identity (honours)

ANTC6808: History, Theory and Methods in Anthropology (honours)

RMFT7900: Violence and Memory: Approaches to Studying Violent Pasts and their Aftermaths (Masters)