I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo. My research concerns cultural and institutional change in liberal democracies since the 1960s—with a focus on the areas of religion, morality, work, and politics. 

My first book, The Spiritual Turn: The Religion of the Heart and the Making of Romantic Liberal Modernity (Oxford University Press, 2022), examines the social and political implications of the shift from "religion" to "spirituality," which has, in recent years, transformed the religious landscape of the West (and beyond). I have since published a co-edited volume on the spiritual turn, The Shape of Spirituality: The Public Significance of a New Religious Formation (Columbia University Press, 2024), and continue to write on contemporary religion.

Meanwhile, I am currently working on my second sole-authored book, tentatively titled, In Search of Character, which draws from interviews with urban university-educated professionals and rural nonuniversity-educated workers in Canada, to explore the cultural and ethical dimensions of the growing “diploma divide” in twenty-first century liberal democracies.

I have published academic articles in Sociological Theory, American Journal of Cultural Sociology,  Sociology of Religion, Civic Sociology​, Religion​, European Journal of Social Theory, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Cultural Sociology, History of the Human Sciences, and The Sociological Review, among other journals. I also occasionally write for a public audience.  Check out some of my articles and public writing on my Writing page.

Please feel free to browse my website. And should you require any further information, don’t hesitate to contact me.