Core Team Members:
Gary Adler (Ph.D., University of Arizona) is Associate Professor of Sociology at Penn State University. His research examines how culture works at the intersection of religion and politics, especially in civic organizations, as well as how religion changes. His book, Empathy Beyond U.S. Borders: The Challenges of Transnational Civic Engagement (Cambridge University Press), used mixed methods to show the cultural and organizational processes that structure transnational religious and civic engagement. His first two books, Secularism, Catholicism, and the Future of Public Life (Oxford University Press) and American Parishes: Remaking Local Catholicism (Fordham University Press), examined the effects of social change on Catholicism. He was a 2024 U.S. State Department Fulbright Fellow.
Jonathan Coley (Ph.D., Vanderbilt University) is Associate Professor of Sociology at Oklahoma State University. He has published widely on religion, social movements, politics, and education. His book Gay on God’s Campus (The University of North Carolina Press) examines LGBTQ student groups at Christian colleges and universities. His work shows that such groups have played a major role in producing more inclusive campus climates at Christian colleges and universities and in shaping people’s understandings about the intersections of religious and LGBTQ identities. His other ongoing projects examine student activism at U.S. colleges and universities and occupational activism among professional workers in the United States.
Damon Mayrl (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) is Associate Professor of Sociology at Colby College. He has written extensively on religion, politics, culture, and American government. His book Secular Conversions: Political Institutions and Religious Education in the United States and Australia, 1800-2000 (Cambridge University Press) employed historical and comparative methods to show how institutional factors such as local control, administrative discretion, and procedural rules help structure political contests over the appropriate relationship between church and state in the United States and Australia. In related theoretical work, he has shown how the boundaries between the state and private sector, and religion and culture, are stakes in politically consequential classification struggles.
Eric Plutzer (Ph.D., Washington University) is Professor of Political Science and Sociology at Penn State University. He served as academic director of Pennsylvania State University’s (PSU) Survey Research Center for eight years and is currently co-editor-in-chief of Public Opinion Quarterly. His research program includes a longstanding focus on religion, including its impact on attitudes toward gender, reproductive rights, and voting. His 2010 book with Michael Berkman, Evolution, Creationism, and the Battle to Control America’s Classrooms (Cambridge University Press), examines teachers as street level bureaucrats negotiating conflicting personal, professional, religious and community values as they navigate the challenges of teaching evolution. That project has continued with extensions to climate change, sexuality education and teaching about vaccines.
Rebecca Sager (Ph.D., University of Arizona) is Professor of Sociology at Loyola Marymount University. Her work has examined the interplay of religion, politics and social movements using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Her book Faith, Politics and Power (Oxford University Press) examined the role of conservative evangelical movements in state implementation of faith-based initiatives using extensive qualitative data, as well as quantitative data analysis. She also has a forthcoming book with NYU Press on the engagement with religion by Democratic Party candidates and activists. This work examines the role of progressive religious movement politics within the Democratic Party, as well as the role of secular activists in shaping the way religion shapes progressive political activism.
Faculty Contributors:
Selena Ortiz (Ph.D., UCLA) is Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Administration and Demography at Penn State University. She is also a research fellow at the FrameWorks Institute in Washington, D.C. and is chair of the American Public Health Association’s Ethics Section. Her research focuses on health and social policy formation, as well as access to health services and outcomes. Her research incorporates diverse methodologies, including semi-structured interviews, qualitative and quantitative content analysis, topic modeling, population-based online survey experiments, and diverse econometric methods, and has appeared in journals such as Sociology of Religion, Public Health Reports, Preventive Medicine, the American Journal of Public Health, Medical Care, Social Science & Medicine, and JAMA.
Graduate Student Contributors:
Amber Churchwell (M.A., Emory University) is a sociology Ph.D. student at Emory University studying culture and inequality. Using qualitative methods, Amber’s current research primarily focuses on purposeful teenage pregnancy in the rural south, and social discourse development in rural areas. Amber’s other ongoing projects include examining sex education in rural schools, as well as fieldwork examining the exclusion of non-White narratives from local histories in the rural south.
Daniel Cueto-Villalobos (M.A., University of Minnesota) is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology at the University of Minnesota studying culture, religion, cities, race, and civic participation. Daniel is particularly interested in how diverse groups and organizations navigate questions of identity, representation, and inequality during periods of crisis. In his time at the University of Minnesota, Daniel has collaborated on multiple mixed-methods projects examining civic participation, urban change, race, religion, policing and the criminal justice system, and nationalism. He contributes regularly to The Society Pages.
Gabby Gomez (M.A., Lehigh University) is a sociology Ph.D. student at Oklahoma State University studying health and medicine, social inequality, and social movements. Her dissertation project focuses on the weight-neutral/inclusive healthcare movement. She has also conducted research on health inequalities faced by LGBTQ and Native American communities in the United States and student activism and inequalities at U.S. colleges and universities. She is currently on the job market.
Alexandria Love (B.S., Oklahoma State University) is a master’s student in sociology at Oklahoma State University, studying race, belonging, religion, law, and politics. Her master’s thesis examines the unique racialized experiences of Native American Freedmen descendants in Oklahoma. After completing her master’s degree, she hopes to pursue a Ph.D. and J.D.
Joi R. Orr (Ph.D., Emory University) is a recent graduate of Emory University in the field of Social Christian Ethics. Broadly, her research investigates the historic and contemporary role of the “Black Church” in progressive social justice movements. Her dissertation, “Liberation from the Ground Up: Christian Ethics and the Radical Imagination,” is a comparative study of “back to the land” movements which includes a qualitative study of the Black Church Food Security Network – a faith-based nonprofit committed to eradicating food apartheid in Baltimore, MD. Currently, Joi is a Louisville Institute Postdoctoral Scholar, teaching at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, GA.
Elise Wolff (M.A., Lehigh University, Penn State University) is a doctoral student in Sociology at Penn State University. Her research interests include culture, sociology of religion, theory, social movements and organizations. Her master’s thesis focused on the history of intellectual disability advocacy in the United States and interactions between professional and activist groups in that field. Elise’s dissertation uses archival materials to investigate the creation and development of the interdisciplinary academic field of Peace & Conflict Studies in US colleges and universities, including its ties to religion.