John Williams arrived in Singapore in the early 1980s from the University of Hull, where he obtained his Ph.D. under Alan R. White. He was thereafter largely based in Singapore, first as Lecturer at the National University of Singapore and subsequently as Associate Professor at Singapore Management University. Interspersed with these appointments were brief stints in Jamaica, as Head of Philosophy at the University of the West Indies; South Africa, as Visiting Fellow at Rhodes University; and, most recently, the Republic of Kazakhstan, as Professor at Nazarbayev University. He passed away in August 2019 in Singapore.