{"id":566,"date":"2023-01-12T21:06:08","date_gmt":"2023-01-12T21:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/iacs\/?page_id=566"},"modified":"2026-03-17T15:12:01","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T15:12:01","slug":"hancock-and-depaul-fellows","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/iacs\/hancock-and-depaul-fellows\/","title":{"rendered":"Fellowships"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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IACS Fellowships support scholars conducting cutting-edge research across academic disciplines that contributes to Catholic thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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2025-26 Senior Research Fellow Tricia Bruce, PhD<\/h2>\n

\"\"Dr. Bruce\u00a0is a sociologist of religion and award-winning author with a PhD in sociology from the University of California\u00a0Santa Barbara.\u00a0Her books include\u00a0Faithful Revolution<\/i>\u00a0(Oxford, 2011\/2014), Polarization in the US Catholic Church\u00a0<\/i>(Liturgical Press, 2016),\u00a0Parish and Place<\/i>\u00a0(Oxford, 2017), American Parishes<\/i>\u00a0(Fordham, 2017),\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0How Americans Think About Abortion<\/i>\u00a0(Univ. of California Press, 2026). She has also written for\u00a0The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine<\/i>,\u00a0LA Times, Philadelphia Inquirer,<\/i>\u00a0and more, as well as academic journals including\u00a0Science Advances<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0Review of Religious Research<\/i>. She was appointed Consultor to the Vatican\u2019s General Secretariat of the Synod by Pope Francis and has served as President of the Association for the Sociology of Religion as well as Chair of the American Sociological Association\u2019s Religion Section. A former Research Associate Professor at Georgetown University, tenured professor at Maryville College, and Director of Springtide Research Institute, she is currently President-Elect of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and an affiliate of the University of Notre Dame\u2019s Center for the Study of Religion and Society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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Hancock Fellowship 2023<\/h2>\n

Beauty at Work: How Aesthetics Matter for Human Flourishing<\/strong><\/p>\n

Brandon Vaidyanathan, Ph.D.
\n\"Brandon<\/a><\/h3>\n

Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology
\nThe Catholic University of America<\/p>\n

Brandon\u00a0Vaidyanathan, Ph.D., is the 2023 Hancock Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at USC. He is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Sociology at The Catholic University of America in Washington D.C.<\/p>\n

Vaidyanathan\u2019s research examines how culture shapes human flourishing across a variety of institutional disciplines and fields including business, religion and science, and has been published widely in peer-reviewed\u00a0journals. His research has been funded by grants from the John Templeton Foundation, Templeton Religion Trust and the Lilly Endowment.<\/p>\n

He holds bachelor\u2019s and master\u2019s degrees in business administration from St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia and HEC Montreal respectively, and a doctorate in sociology from the University of Notre Dame.<\/p>\n

Vaidyanathan is the author of\u00a0Mercenaries and Missionaries: Capitalism and Catholicism in the Global South<\/i><\/a>, published in 2019 by Cornell University Press.<\/p>\n

He was born in Qatar and lived in Oman, India, the UAE, and Canada before moving to the U.S. He lives in Maryland with his wife\u00a0Claire<\/a>\u00a0and their six children.<\/p>\n

Vaidyanathan\u2019s work as part of the IACS Hancock Fellowship in 2023 includes:<\/p>\n