Research

I am Associate Director of the Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I received my Ph.D. in Religious Studies from UCSB in 2018.

I am Associate Director of the Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life at the University of California, Santa Barbara. My research focuses on American religions and secularism, specializing in how new religious movements, Asian American religions, and the religiously unaffiliated shape modern American culture.

Research Areas

I employ humanistic and social scientific methods to investigate how religion is constructed through discourse, practices, and institutions. I also research governmental regulation of religion and the racialization of religion.

Current projects include the Meaning of Religion Project, part of an intergenerational study of religion, spirituality, and values funded by the John Templeton Foundation; the Secular Communities Survey, the largest-ever study of organized nonbelievers in the U.S.; a co-edited volume (with Melissa Borja) on Asian American Religions, Religious Freedom, and the State; a monograph on the Universal Life Church; and an hour-length documentary about Walter H. Capps.

Publications

I have published articles on the Universal Life Church and contemporary American weddings, organic foods in new religious movements, biodiversity and spiritual well-being, the transmission of spirituality across generations, and brainwashing, race, and the Unification Church and other new religious movements. I have also published numerous book reviews, encyclopedia entries, and articles for academic blogs. You can find these here.

I conducted podcast interviews and written posts for the Religious Studies Project.

Service

I serve on the steering committees of the Sociology of Religion Unit and Asian North American Religion, Culture, & Society Unit at the American Academy of Religion (AAR).