Friday Fellow Feature: Darien Alexander Williams

Our Featured Fellow for March is Darien Alexander Williams, a Ph.D. candidate in Urban Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and incoming Assistant Professor of Climate and Environmental Justice at the Boston University School of Social Work. Darien joined the Bill Anderson Fund in 2018. Since then, he has contributed significantly to the organization’s mission, having served as Secretary and presented in the annual Lightning Talks Session at the Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshop.

Darien’s research interests include disaster and climate justice, Black Studies, Islamic Studies, and community-based approaches to disaster response and recovery. He has published multiple articles alongside BAF colleagues, including “No Justice, no resilience: Prison abolition as disaster mitigation in an era of climate change” and “Landscapes of Trust: An Investigation of Posthurricane Engagement and Recovery” both in Environmental Justice. These publications explore connections between Blackness and the built environment. His other publications explore natural gas pipeline explosions, design education, and the social forces that produce disaster. He has forthcoming work on the role of mosques in Black neighborhood development in the 20th-century United States.

Darien has been named an Emerging Scholar in Social Work, Climate, and Environmental Justice at Boston University, and has collaborated with several grassroots organizations in Boston on local social issues. He also works on a team of researchers facilitating participatory action research on spatial justice in his hometown of Jacksonville, Florida. Outside of academia, Darien has co-hosted a season of Disasters: Deconstructed Podcast and currently works as an organizer for the Queer Muslims of Boston (QMOB), a social and religious organization for the LGBTQ Muslim community of New England. 

Darien is completing his three-paper dissertation titled Locating a Black Planning Tradition and Spatializing Black Nationalism. He also holds a Master of City & Regional Planning degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from the University of Florida. 

You can find Darien’s publications here or connect via Twitter here. 

RESEARCH INTERESTS: urban planning, disaster, climate change, Blackness, Islam