Roman Williams is the founder of Interfaith Photovoice, a social enterprise where he gets to combine two things he's passionate about: photography and sociology. Through this work, he creates encounters for intergroup and interfaith engagement that are visual, participatory, and deeply human.

His academic journey took him through a Ph.D. in the sociology of religion at Boston University and a Th.M. focused on global religions from Gordon-Conwell Seminary. Throughout his academic career, he's been fascinated by how people actually live their religion in everyday life, and he's explored this through participatory visual methodologies—work that came together in his edited volume, Seeing Religion (Routledge, 2015).

During his years as a professor, something shifted inside him. He found himself drawn more and more toward community-based participatory action research—work that felt immediate, tangible, and transformative. When the pandemic hit, it gave him the space (and honestly, the courage) to step out of academia and into his own consulting practice. Now he focuses on what matters most to him: belief, belonging, and human flourishing.

These days, Roman likes to think he's helping to make the world a better place one photo at a time. It might sound idealistic, but he's seen what can happen when people use their smartphone cameras to snap photos and share their stories with one another. His book, Sacred Snaps: Photovoice for Interfaith Engagement (co-authored with Cathy Holtmann and Bill Sachs), is his invitation to join him in this work. Because the more of us doing this, the better!