Elaine Howard Ecklund
Elaine Howard Ecklund is the Herbert S. Autrey Chair in Social Sciences and a professor of sociology at Rice University, as well as director of the Boniuk Institute for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance at Rice University. Theoretically, her sociological work explores how individuals and small groups bring changes to larger institutions that constrain them. Substantively, her work explores this topic in relationship to religion and science, gender, race, and immigration in different national contexts.
Ecklund is the author of nine books, over 150 peer-reviewed research articles, and numerous op-eds. She has received over 10 million dollars in grants and awards, including those from the Templeton Religion Trust, Lilly Endowment, Inc., Templeton World Charity Foundation, National Science Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, and the John Templeton Foundation. Her research has been covered thousands of times in national and international news media, including USA Today, Nature, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist.
She received a Ph.D. in 2004 from Cornell University, where she was the recipient of the Class of 2004 Graduate Student Baccalaureate Award for Academic Excellence and Community Service. She has been a Gifford Lecturer and was the 2022 recipient of the Rice School of Social Sciences Dean’s Distinguished Senior Researcher Award and a 2023 winner of the Presidential Mentoring Award. Ecklund has previously served as chair of the American Sociological Association’s Section on the Sociology of Religion and as president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. Over the past several years, Ecklund’s research has explored how scientists in different nations understand religion, ethics, and gender. Ecklund teaches classes at the graduate and undergraduate level on immigration, sociology of science, classical sociological theory, research methods, and religion in public life.
