Bill Williams originally trained as a chemist at the National University of Ireland and went on to work in education in Ireland, UK, Eritrea, Kenya, Mozambique and Portugal and to run international distance courses for the International Labour Organization in various African countries.

He taught technical communication and industrial management at the Barreiro School of Technology of Setúbal Polytechnic Institute in Portugal, until his retirement in 2017.  He has been an invited lecturer at IST, University of Lisbon and the Technical University of Madrid.

He serves as an associate editor of the European Journal of Engineering Education (EJEE) published by the European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI) and senior associate editor of the Journal of Engineering Education (JEE) published by the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). He was lead editor of “Engineering Practice in a Global Context, Understanding the Technical and the Social” an edited volume published by Routledge in 2014.

He is Professor Emeritus of Setúbal Polytechnic Institute and Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at TUDublin, Ireland.

Bill Williams is a  member of the Governing Board of the European Working Group on Engineering Education Research of SEFI, was elected to the Governing Board of REEN (Research in Engineering Education Network) in 2014 to represent the European region of this 500-member network and he was  voted Chair of the Board for 2016-2017. He is a founder member of the Portuguese Society for Engineering Education (SPEE) and is a member of the Review Committee for the Taxonomy of the Field of Engineering Education Research curated by the University of Michigan.