Paul DiMaggio
Paul DiMaggio graduated from Swarthmore College and received his Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University. Before moving to New York University, where he is a professor of sociology and a faculty affiliate of the Center for Data Science, the Stern School of Business, and the Wagner School of Public Service, in 2016, he taught for 12 years at Yale University and for 24 years at Princeton University, where he chaired the sociology department and was director of the Center for the Study of Social Organization and co-director (with Stanley Katz) of the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies.
DiMaggio’s work has ranged across such topics as social networks, social inequality, economic institutions, and public opinion, but his primary focus has been on the study of culture from a sociological and cognitive perspective. His research (with Wendy Cadge, Lynn Robinson, and Brian Steensland) on the role of religion in public conflicts over the arts during the “culture wars” of the 1990s explicated grievances that religious actors brought to debates over the media and the arts in that decade. His research on Americans’ attitudes toward science, religion, and spiritualism (with Amir Goldberg, Hana Shepherd, and Ramina Sotoudah) revealed that roughly half of Americans in the late 20th century viewed religion and science as antagonistic, whereas a substantial proportion held favorable attitudes toward both.
DiMaggio is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the American Philosophical Society.
