Dr. Phil Williams is the Wesley W. Posvar Professor and Director of the Matthew B. Ridgway Center for International Security Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. His previous assignments included Visiting Professor at the Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College; and Visiting Scientist at CERT Carnegie Mellon University, where he worked on cyber-crime and infrastructure protection. Dr. Williams has worked extensively on transnational criminal networks, terrorist networks, terrorist finances, and has focused most recently on the rise of drug trafficking violence in Mexico.

He has published extensively in the field of international security. He has written many books on the field of international security including: Crisis Management (1976); The Senate and U.S. Troops in Europe (1986); and, (with Mike Bowker) Superpower Detente: A Reappraisal (1987); along with a number of edited volumes on Russian organized crime, trafficking in women, and combating transnational crime.

Dr. Williams is also the author of From the New Middle Ages to a New Dark Age: The Decline of the State and U.S. Strategy (Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2008) and Criminals, Militias and Insurgents: Organized Crime in Iraq (Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2009). He also co-authored (with James Cockayne) The Invisible Tide: Towards an International Strategy to Deal with Drug Trafficking Through West Africa (International Peace Institute, 2009).