Jacqui Frost

Jacqui Frost is a postdoctoral fellow with the Religion and Public Life Program at Rice University. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from University of Minnesota in June 2020. Frost is a mixed-methods scholar whose research is grounded in cultural sociology with a focus on the intersections of religion, science, gender, and community. In her dissertation, Modern but Not Meaningless: Nonreligious Cultures and Communities in the United States, Frost investigates the ways that atheists combine their faith in science with religious-like practices in an “atheist church” called the Sunday Assembly. Drawing on her qualitative work with nonreligious communities, Frost is also working to create better quantitative measures of nonreligious identities, beliefs, and practices with her Nonreligion, Engagement, and Wellbeing survey project.

Her work with the Science and Religion project at the RPLP will focus on investigating the growing movement of transhumanism and the ways that transhumanists combine religious and scientific perspectives by secularizing traditional religious practices while imbuing technology and science with religious significance. Frost’s research has been published in American Sociological Review, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Social Currents, Implicit Religion, and Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly.