Ruiqian Li

I am an award-winning sociologist of religion studying religious nationalism and public religion, with particular attention to how religion shapes, and is shaped by, cultural and social change. My work examines how Americans imagine a "Christian nation" in fundamentally different ways, and asks when religion is a positive or negative force for a multicultural liberal democracy, and why. As a survey methodologist with nine years of experience, I design and test rigorous items and scales that help scholars measure religious and cultural change, and I am a committed advocate for more transparent practices in the sociology of religion. My work appears in journals such as Social Forces, Socius, Politics and Religion, the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, and the American Journal of Sociology (book review).