Elaine Howard Ecklund
Assistant Professor
Faculty Biography for Elaine Howard Ecklund, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology
Elaine Howard Ecklund joined the department of sociology as an assistant professor after completing a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at Rice University . Ecklund received a PhD in sociology (2004) from Cornell University . Exploring mechanisms of institutional change draws together Ecklund's previous, current, and future research. Specifically, she is interested in how individuals develop cognitive schema--ways of interpreting the world--that are at odds with institutions by which they are constrained. She then examines how individuals use such frameworks to bring changes to these larger institutions. Her research addresses this theoretical topic in the areas of religion, race and ethnicity, immigration, civic life, science and gender. Ecklund is currently directing three national research projects. One examines changes to civil society as a result of recent immigration to the US . The other is a national study on religion and spirituality among scientists at elite research universities, the first study in over twenty years to systematically gather data on this topic. The third examines the experiences of women in academic biology and physics. Ecklund's work has appeared in the Annual Review of Sociology, American Behavioral Scientist , Sociological Quarterly , Ethnic and Racial Studies , Sociology of Religion , Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion , Journal of Asian American Studies , and Review of Religious Research. Elaine Howard Ecklund's first book, Korean American Evangelicals: New Models for Civic Life was released in November 2006 by Oxford University Press. To read more about Ecklund's research and teaching visit http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~ehe/
email: ehe [at] buffalo [dot] edu