Staff and Fellows

Founding Director

Elaine Howard Ecklund is the Herbert S. Autrey Chair in Social Sciences, a professor of sociology, and a Rice Scholar at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. She is the author of five books and more than 70 research articles, as well as numerous op-eds for national publications. She has received grants and awards from a number of organizations, including the National Science Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, John Templeton Foundation, Templeton World Charity Foundation, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and the Henry Luce Foundation. In 2013, she received the Charles Duncan Award for Most Outstanding Academic Achievement. She is currently president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.

Associate Director of Research

Laura Achenbaum is responsible for overseeing all research-related activities at the RPLP. She manages the full arc of the program’s research projects, designing and implementing strategies for large-scale data collection and analysis, ensuring the completion of project outputs and outcomes, supporting manuscript development and the dissemination of findings, and pursuing future research and program funding opportunities. She works closely with and mentors RPLP students and staff, and contributes to outreach and development activities. Laura previously worked at the Baylor College of Medicine and has published on research ethics. She has a bachelor’s degree from New York University and a master’s in sociology from the University of Houston.

Research Project Manager

Deidra Carroll Coleman is the Research Project Manager for the “Faith at Work” study. She is responsible for the coordination of team member efforts, data collection (including survey and interview data), data processing, and timeline management. She also supports other research initiatives housed in the RPLP, including outreach and programmatic initiatives. Deidra is a doctoral candidate in public health at UTHealth. Her broad research interests are in social epidemiology and community-based participatory research. For her dissertation, Deidra will test whether various levels of religiosity differentially predict human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control. She will also test the sufficiency of the Theory of Planned Behavior to explain HPV vaccine uptake in a sample of racial and ethnic minority youth.

Program Manager

Hayley Hemstreet manages the day-to-day operations of the RPLP and coordinates program events. Over the past four years, she has organized more than 20 events, including a conference in London, and hosted more than 50 outside scholars and civic leaders on the Rice University campus. She has also helped disseminate the work of the program, contributing to op-eds and press releases that have garnered national and international media attention. She graduated from Rice University in 2013 with a dual degree in history and environmental science.

Postbaccalaureate Fellows

Bethany Boucher is the Post-Baccalaureate Fellow for Non-Profit Leadership at the Religion and Public Life Program. Her work is focused primarily on the "Communicating Outlooks for a New Global Religion and Science Synergy: The Engagement Challenge (CONGRESS II)" project, as well as the expansion and implementation of new development strategies. Bethany previously served as the Program Manager at Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston and brings experience with interfaith relations, education, and engagement as well as program development, marketing, and fundraising. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a bachelor’s degree in History and Linguistics.

Postdoctoral Fellows

Curriculum Vitae

Rachel C. Schneider completed a doctorate in religion at Rice University in May 2017. Her dissertation, The Ethics of Whiteness: Race, Religion, and Social Transformation in South Africa, explores how progressive white Christians living in South Africa engage with past and present racial injustice. Working at the intersection of anthropology of religion and critical race studies, her research focuses on how religious commitments shape ethical and political practice and inspire social change. Rachel brings a background in qualitative research methods to RPLP projects on faith at work and religion and inequality. Her writings on race, gender, sexuality, African Christianity, and evangelicalism have been published in Religions, Syndicate Theology, Religious Studies Review, and The Immanent Frame.

Senior Graduate Student Fellows

Simranjit Khalsa is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology. Her research interests include religion, ethnicity, immigration, and race. Her dissertation examines how members of two Sikh communities, one of mainstream Indian Sikhs and one of primarily white converts, experience practicing Sikhism as a minority religious tradition in the U.S. and in England. This research reveals how religion and race intersect and shape the experience of practicing a minority religious tradition and how such experiences are linked to national context. In addition, she has done research on the environment and in work and occupations. Simranjit has published four peer-reviewed articles and has presented her work widely as part of academic conferences and public lectures. She has also received several grants and awards.

Graduate Student Fellows

Dan Bolger is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at Rice. He is currently studying faith-based social service provision, and his research interests include social inequality, religion, race relations, and qualitative methods. He previously worked as an RPLP post-baccalaureate fellow. He graduated from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in 2013 with master’s degrees in mental health counseling and Christian studies. He also has a bachelor’s in psychology from John Brown University.

Jauhara Ferguson is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at Rice University, where she works with the RPLP and the Racism and Racial Experiences (RARE) workgroup. Her research interests focus on the intersection between race and religion, specifically examining inter-racial/ethnic divides within Muslim American communities. As a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Research Fellow, she previously conducted research on “Radical Narratives of Muslim Male Youth: A Critical Investigation of The Media Rhetoric of Radicalization.” She is an alumnae of Spelman College, where she completed her bachelor's degree in international studies with a minor in religious studies.

Bradley Johnson is a graduate student in the Department of Religion at Rice University. He specializes in the interplay between religion and politics in southern Africa, and the history of millenarian movements. At the moment, his research focuses on religious responses to and interpretations of world-breaking catastrophes, particularly climate change and similar anthropogenic disasters. He earned his master's degree in religion from Wake Forest University, and his bachelor's from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Brenton Kalinowski is a graduate student in the department of Sociology at Rice University and has worked with RPLP since 2019. Brenton’s research interests include immigrant religious identities and experience, religion and the development of public opinion, geographic context, and qualitative methods. He has previously conducted research on Hinduism in the United States while completing his Master’s in Social Science from the University of Chicago and his Bachelor’s in Anthropology at The College of Wooster.

Sharan Kaur Mehta is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at Rice. Sharan works on the RPLP’s Religion Among Scientists in International Context (RASIC) project and the Religious Understandings of Science (RUS) project. Her research interests include religion, interfaith relations, race and ethnicity, gender, and inequality in STEM education. Her master’s research focuses on the lived experiences of Muslim and Sikh Americans and explores the effect of religious discrimination and bias-related violence. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry with a minor in sociology.

Esmeralda Sanchez Salazar is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at Rice, where she works with the RPLP and the Houston Education Research Consortium (HERC). She began her doctoral studies in sociology at Rice in 2016 to focus on how religion and other issues affect educational achievement. She previously served as deputy director of the Faith and Education Coalition for the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC), America’s largest Hispanic evangelical organization, where she led national, state, and local initiatives promoting civic engagement among faith communities in educational equity issues. She has a master’s degree from the University of Texas at Dallas and a bachelor’s from Southern Methodist University.

Undergraduate Student Fellows

Rose Kantorczyk is a senior at Rice studying sociology, policy studies, and Jewish studies. The RPLP projects she is involved in include "Faith at Work" and "Religion-Related Bias Victimization: Addressing a Blind Spot." Previously, Rose has worked for the National Partnership for Women and Families and Rice's Center for Civic Leadership. She is particularly interested in sociologically informed policy and faith-based advocacy, and would like to utilize those interests in the public policy field after graduating from Rice.

Michael McDowell is a senior at Rice studying sociology and religion. Under the mentorship of Elaine Howard Ecklund, he is conducting a senior honors thesis on the differences in political preferences between generations of evangelicals. Michael worked for the Houston Education Research Consortium prior to RPLP. He hopes to attend graduate school after graduating from Rice, with long-term interest in the broad intersection of theology and sociology.

Connor Rothschild is a junior at Rice studying sociology, political science, and social policy analysis. At RPLP, he is involved with the "Faith at Work" project and “Turning the Tables on Gender and Religion.” Prior to his involvement with RPLP, Connor worked for the Baker Institute for Public Policy and the Texas Policy Lab. Upon graduation, he hopes to attend graduate school to further research religion in the public sphere.

Visiting Research Fellows

Cleve V. Tinsley IV earned his Ph.D. in Rice University's department of religion in August 2019. His dissertation, "Making Black Lives Matter: Race and Religion in Struggles for African-American Identity," explores the relationship between religion and ongoing black freedom struggles in the US. In it, he argues that understanding the sociological significance and meaning of African-American religious struggle requires more extensive research strategies given the complex nature of religious meaning-making in the lives of African Americans today. Cleve currently works as a visiting research fellow with the RPLP while also working on his first manuscript based on his thesis.

Non-resident Research Fellows

Di Di is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Santa Clara University. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from Rice University. Prior to joining the faculty at Santa Clara University, Di Di was an RPLP graduate student fellow from 2012 to 2019. Her research examines the intersection between religion and other social institutions, including gender, ethnicity, science, and technology. Her current book project relies on a 15-month ethnographic research project and 80 in-depth interviews with ethnic Chinese Buddhists from two temples, one in mainland China and the other in the U.S. Her work has appeared in Sociology of Religion, Public Understanding of Science, and Journal of Contemporary China.

David R. Johnson is an assistant professor of higher education leadership at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he specializes in the sociology of higher education, work and organizations, religion, and science. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Nevada, Reno, he was an RPLP postdoctoral fellow from 2012 to 2015. He completed his doctoral training in sociology at the University of Georgia. David is the author of A Fractured Profession: Commercialism and Conflict in Academic Science (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017). His scholarship can also be found in top social science journals such as The Journal of Higher Education, Social Forces, Sociological Science, Public Understanding of Science, and Science, Technology, and Human Values.

Jared Peifer is an assistant professor of management at Baruch College. He was an RPLP postdoctoral fellow from 2011 to 2013. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from Cornell University in 2011. Jared’s research primarily focuses on the moral motivations of people as they engage in various economic activity. Most of his work in this vein explores the moral motivations of investors by focusing on socially responsible investing. He has also published work on charitable giving and environmental consumption, and is currently working on articles that deal with voluntary simplicity, materialism, and the commercialization of scientific research.

Pamela Prickett is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Amsterdam. From 2015 to 2017 she was an RPLP postdoctoral fellow. As a sociologist Pamela uses ethnographic and historical methods to understand how poverty and inequality are experienced, structured, and reproduced within urban communities. Her current book project, Believing in South Central, draws on more than five years of fieldwork in an African-American Muslim community in a low-income neighborhood in Los Angeles. The book examines the everyday lives of the pious urban poor, including the ways they draw on each other and local religious organizations for social support in light of a changing urban landscape. Her work has appeared in Gender & Society and City & Community.

Chris Scheitle is an assistant professor of sociology at West Virginia University. Broadly, his research examines the social structure and dynamics of religion in the United States, with a focus on three specific areas. The first explores the relationship between religion and science. A second examines innovations in how religion is organized in the United States, especially in regards to the growth of so-called parachurch organizations. The last area of research looks at crimes against religious congregations. He has published two books, over two dozen scholarly articles, and has been awarded two research grants from the National Science Foundation. His research has been featured in a number of media outlets, including USA Today, CNN.com, and ABC News.

Bob Thomson is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). He completed his Ph.D. in Sociology at Baylor University in 2017, focusing on the intersection of crime, religion, and social inequality. He then worked as a postdoctoral research fellow for the Religion and Public Life Program before joining the Department of Sociology at UAH in 2019. Bob's current research includes a grant-funded project titled, “Black or Blue? A Pilot Study of Religious and Political Sources of Moral Attitudes Towards Police and Protest.”

Brandon Vaidyanathan is an associate professor of sociology at The Catholic University of America. Born and raised in the Arabian Gulf, he holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in management from Canada and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Notre Dame. His research examines cultural dimensions of religious, commercial, medical, and scientific institutions, and has been published in journals such as Social Problems, Social Forces, Sociology of Religion, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, and Journal of the American Academy of Religion.

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