Dr. Athol Williams holds the following positions at the University of Oxford, UK:

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• Lecturer in Management, Saïd Business School (see profile)

• Research Associate, Hertford College (see profile)

• Lecturer in Management (till July 2024), St Peter's College (see profile)

• Visiting Tutor, St Catherine's College 

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He teaches the following subjects:

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• Strategic management

• Strategic management & ethics

• Financial & management accounting

• General management

• Entrepreneurship & innovation

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His research interests include:

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• Strategy formulation – focus on organisational and cognitive processes for strategy formulation, including the interplay between strategy and ethics, and the interplay between strategy, corporate finance and risk management. 

• Self-leadership – research-based tools for personal excellence and leadership by example. This involves developing approaches to personal leadership and exploring the challenges of an ethical personal and professional life.  

• Corporate moral responsibility – debates over corporate responsibility for justice and social development, dilemmas of pursuing ethical business practice, tools for ethical decision-making, tools for corporate amends after wrongdoing, and corporate governance required to oversee and ensure compliance with these responsibilities.

• Reparative justice – philosophical justifications and pragmatic approaches for making amends for current and historical injustices by different institutions including nations, social groups, corporations and universities.

• The possibility of poetry – exploring the possibility of poetry as prayer, as forms of social connection, particularly in fostering peace. Exploring poetry as philosophy.

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Williams holds seven degrees in a range of subjects (political philosophy, ethics, public administration, finance, business and engineering) as follows:

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• PhD, University of Oxford, UK

• MPhil, University of Oxford, UK

• MSc (Political theory), London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), UK

• MPA, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, USA

• MSc (Finance), London Business School, UK

• MBA, MIT Sloan School of Management, USA

• BSc (Engineering), University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

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His previous academic roles include (all in South Africa):

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• Senior Lecturer, Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town

• Research Fellow, Centre for Applied Ethics, University of Stellenbosch

• Adjunct Professor, School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand

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Williams serves on the Academic Advisory Board of the Journal of Indentureship and its Legacies, and is a member of the Scholars & Practitioners Network of the Corporate Responsibility Initiative at Harvard University. He is the co-founder of Read to Rise, a youth literacy organisation, and founder of the Institute of Social & Corporate Ethics, a research-based advocacy organisation.

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