About

William Ming Liu, Ph.D., is a Professor of Counseling Psychology and Department Chair at the University of Maryland. His research interests focus on social class and classism, men and masculinity, and White supremacy and privilege. He has received leadership awards from the Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity and Race (Division 45 of APA), and the Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinities (Division 51 of APA). In 2024, he was awarded the Distinguished Leadership in Psychology by the Committee on Socioeconomic Status (APA) for his significant contributions to understanding socioeconomic status. His scholarly work is widely cited and has influenced various APA guidelines and policies related to multiculturalism, systemic racism, and social justice. Liu has authored and edited numerous books and chapters on multicultural competencies, social class, and culturally responsive counseling, and he is a co-author of the forthcoming book titled 'Systems of White Supremacy and White Privilege: A Racial-Spatial Framework for Psychology.' He serves as the Editor for the Journal of Counseling Psychology and has held editorial roles for other prominent psychology journals. His professional achievements include fellowships in Division 17 and 51 of the APA, and he has been recognized with multiple awards for mentoring, diversity, and leadership in the field of psychology.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Political Science
• Sociology
• Medical education
• Criminology
• Social psychology
• Psychiatry
• Aesthetics
• Art
• Neuroscience
• Medicine
• Gender studies
• Law
• Psychotherapist

Selected publications

• Our stories of origins: Decolonial healing through zines and zine-making.

  American Psychologist · 2025-05-01

  article

  Zine-making can facilitate our remembering of origin stories and experiential knowledge around our differential racializations within coloniality; it can illuminate who we are in relation to systemic racism and power and, importantly, how we might work toward liberatory futures for self and community. In this article, we describe how psychology can be transformed through zines and zine-making. As expressions of insurgencies, resistance, and protest, zines are self-publications that often comprise "writing, photography, collage, illustration and/or other creative work" (Watson & Bennett, 2021, p. 115), and they can look like mini-booklets, vision boards, dioramas, origamis, mobiles, or any kind of creative, mixed form made of found and repurposed materials (e.g., old letters, family photos, cardboard boxes, newspapers). Grounded in Critical Race counter-storytelling methodology (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002), rematriation (Gray, 2022), and Blafemme (Mosley, 2023), our zine-making workshop series invite youth of Color in middle and high school to examine their experiences as racialized people in the United States. We focus our discussions on the zines and zine-making processes of seven Black and Asian American women in our workshop. We reflect on ways that psychologists and educators could consider zine-making in clinical, teaching, and research practices. As a hands-on praxis toward decolonial healing, zine-making amplifies our experiential knowledge, encourages collective well-being, fosters critical consciousness, and helps cultivate cross-racial solidarity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• Systemic racism and the differential racializations of Black and non-Black people of Color in white space

  2025-10-30

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  In this chapter, we address some of the shortcomings related to our current approaches to understanding systemic racism in psychology and other mental health research and practices. We propose a framework of systemic racism which connects racist ideologies to institutions and structures that are located around preserving and expanding white spaces and property. In our framework, we discuss the ways in which white time (temporality) is necessary in privileging white supremacy while simultaneously enacting anti-Black racism. We conclude by making connections between our framework and psychology research and practice.

  PublisherDOI

• Unexamined whiteness in the psychological study of men and masculinities: Situating research and practice within white space and white time.

  Psychology of Men & Masculinity · 2024-08-01 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Inaugural editorial for Journal of Counseling Psychology.

  Journal of Counseling Psychology · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations

  editorial1st authorCorresponding

  The Journal of Counseling Psychology serves as the premier journal for critical and rigorous research within the field and beyond. In their inaugural editorial for Journa, Liu is joined by their associated editors and inaugural JCP fellows who have agreed to share authorship and their positionalities. In considering the Journal of Counseling Psychology for research, the editors encourage authors to reflect on these positionalities and how they might integrate their own into their publications. The editorial provides direction and some suggestions on submitted articles and research directions for JCP in the following areas: positionality and critical reflexivity; theoretical and conceptual advancement and clarity; body ideas, frameworks, and conceptualization; data clarity; and cultural validity of research instruments. The editors look forward to working with their communities as they transform their scholarship. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• Anti-Black Racism and Asian American Local Educational Activism: A Critical Race Discourse Analysis

  Educational Researcher · 2023-03-29 · 17 citations

  articleOpen access

  In this critical race discourse analysis of legal documents and correspondence, we discuss how a small number of highly organized and visible groups of Asian American parent activists oppose admissions policy reforms intended to diversify student enrollment to specialized high schools. We identify two narratives deployed by this vocal minority: anti-Asian discrimination and Asian American exceptionalism. These narratives prioritize the historical and interpersonal racialized experiences of Asian Americans over institutionalized racial inequality experienced by Black students, namely, residential housing and school segregation. By valorizing Asian American exceptionalism and meritocracy, these claims relegate racism as a historical problem, mirroring ideologies of white supremacy and anti-Blackness while reconstituting anti-racism.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Asian American Student Involvement in Asian American Culture Centers

  2023-06-22 · 7 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  African American or Black cultural centers took root in American higher educational institutions during the 1970s and served as the model for other racial/ethnic culture centers (i.e., Asian American, Latina/o, and American Indian). Originally, many of the centers provided a safe haven and a programming resource for African American students (Wei, 1993). However, as campus demographics changed, certain campuses experienced an increase of students from other racial/ethnic communities. Concomitant to the increasing racial/ethnic diversity was the growing activism and voice of these communities. Since the mid-1980s, campuses have responded to the increasing needs of Asian and Pacific Islander American, Latina/o, and American Indian students by providing facilities and programming agencies that address their particular cultural cocurricular needs (Gupta, 1998; Hurtado, Milem, Clayton-Pedersen, & Allen, 1998).

  PublisherDOI

• Understanding systemic racism: Anti-Blackness, white supremacy, racial capitalism, and the re/creation of white space and time.

  Journal of Counseling Psychology · 2023 · 40 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Sociology

  In this article, the authors explain systemic racism through a racial-spatial framework wherein anti-Blackness, white supremacy, and racial capitalism interlock to create and recreate white space and time. Through the creation of private property, institutional inequities become embedded and structured for the benefit of white people. The framework provides a way to conceptualize how our geographies are racialized and how time is often used against Black and non-Black people of Color. In contrast to white experiences of feeling "in-place" almost everywhere, Black and non-Black people of Color continually experience displacement and dispossession of both their place and their time. This racial-spatial onto-epistemology is derived from the knowledge and experiences of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, and other non-Black people of Color, and how they have learned through acculturation, racial trauma, and micro-aggressions to thrive in white spaces and contend with racism such as time-theft. The authors posit that through reclaiming space and time, Black and non-Black people of Color can imagine and practice possibilities that center their lived experiences and knowledge as well as elevate their communities. Recognizing the importance of reclaiming space and time, the authors encourage counseling psychology researchers, educators, and practitioners to consider their positionalities with respect to systemic racism and the advantages it confers to white people. Through the process of creating counterspaces and using counterstorytelling, practitioners may help clients develop healing and nurturing ecologies that challenge the perniciousness of systemic racism. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• Places that <i>Feel</i> Racist: How the Built Environment Re/Creates White Racial Spaces and Time

  The Counseling Psychologist · 2022-08-04 · 7 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  In this 2022 Janet E. Helms Award for Mentoring and Scholarship keynote, I discuss the importance of understanding how our built-environment and our physical spaces and structures are intertwined with my conceptualization of systemic racism. I describe the problems with how we study racism, systemic racism, and context, and the limitations of how we have adapted traditional psychotherapy theories. In this paper, I propose an examination of structural racism and the ways in which white spaces, white property, and white time work to displace, dispossess, and dislocate Black and other non-Black people of Color. This constant racism within white spaces allows us to understand what may be creating the psychological and physiological stresses many people of Color experience. In better understanding systemic racism, I hope we can focus our critical scholarship on centralizing the humanity of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, and other people of Color.

  PublisherDOI

• Acknowledgment

  Asian American Journal of Psychology · 2022

  • Psychology
  DOI

• Advocacy

  2022-09-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Yunkyoung Loh Garrison

  Bates College

  10 shared

• Anne E. Noonan

  9 shared

• Marcus Alt

  University of Kansas Medical Center

  8 shared

• Alexander Rice

  Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

  7 shared

• Ryan F. Pittsinger

  California State University, Long Beach

  6 shared

• Michael T. Hartley

  University of Arizona

  6 shared

• Francisco J. Sánchez

  Arizona State University

  5 shared

• Derek K. Iwamoto

  5 shared

Awards & honors

• The Committee on Socioeconomic Status (APA), Distinguished L…
• Inaugural Lecture on the Psychological Study of Race and Rac…
• Janet E. Helms Award for Mentoring and Scholarship (2022)
• Fellow, Society for Counseling Psychology, Division 17, Amer…
• Fellow, Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Mascu…