I am Charles A. Dana Professor and Chair of Sociology at Colby College.

My research uses comparative and historical methods to illuminate the interplay of culture, religion, politics, and law. I am the author of Secular Conversions: Political Institutions and Religious Education in the United States and Australia, 1800-2000 (Cambridge University Press, 2016), and After Positivism: New Approaches to Comparison in Historical Sociology (Columbia University Press, 2024, co-edited with Nicholas Hoover Wilson). My research has also appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Sociological Theory, and other scholarly journals and edited volumes. 

My current research investigates how symbolic conflicts influence the form and visibility of the American state, how local religious and government officials understand and negotiate church-state law, and how historical and comparative methods are actually practiced in social scientific research.

I currently serve as a Consulting Editor for the American Journal of Sociology, and on the editorial boards of Sociology of Religion, The Sociological Quarterly, and Civic Sociology. I am a former officer of the Social Science History Association and the American Sociological Association's Section on Comparative and Historical Sociology and Section on the Sociology of Religion.