In 1973, he gained an English Speaking Union Scholarship tenable at the Department of Geography, the University of Western Ontario, Canada and undertook field work on the challenges facing the French language in Quebec and Acadia.
In 1993, while he was working in Toronto as a Multicultural History Society of Ontario Fellow, he was appointed a research professor, School of Welsh, Cardiff University, the post he occupied until 2015.
In June 2015, he was elected a visiting fellow at St Edmund's College, University of Cambridge, where he specialises in aspects of peace and conflict, human rights and minority relations and comparative policy development in multilingual and multicultural polities.
https://www.vhi.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/directory/williams In January 2018 he was named as a senior research associate of the Von Hügel Institute, St Edmund's College, University of Cambridge, where he works on peace and reconciliation in post-conflict societies.
The New Speakers Network His current project, supported by a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship, investigates Official Language Regimes which compares European and Canadian cases.