Katie Corcoran

Dr. Corcoran received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Washington as well as an M.A. in Sociology and an M.A. in International Studies (Comparative Religion). She is a theoretical generalist who studies social groups and networks as links between macro- structures and micro- attitudes and behaviors. Her research applies these lenses to several empirical subfields—organizations, culture, crime/deviance, religion, emotion, inequality, and social movements. She is interested in exploring the processes by which individuals join and leave groups, invest time and resources in them, and come to hold their norms and values. In order to test theoretical predictions, she draws on individual-level, cross-organizational, regional, and national data and uses advanced quantitative as well as qualitative methodologies.

Dr. Corcoran has published articles in journals such as Social Science Research, Sociological Inquiry, Sociological Forum, the British Journal of Social Psychology, the Journal for the Scientific of Religion, and Rationality and Society and recently published the book Religious Hostility: A Global Assessment of Hatred and Terror with Rodney Stark. She is currently completing a book manuscript on megachurches with James K. Wellman and Kate Stockly-Meyerdirk entitled High on God: How the Megachurch Conquered America.