ISR Staff  |
Post-Doc
Fellows |
Graduate
Fellows |
Scholars  |
Resident & Non-Resident Scholars
A-C | D-F | G-I | J-L | M-R | S-V | W-Z
Scholars (Last Name: W-Z)
John Wallace
Non-Resident Scholar, Social Work
University of Pittsburgh
Email John Wallace
View Curriculum Vitae
Homepage
John M. Wallace, Jr. is an associate professor of Social Work at the University of Pittsburgh. His research examines the impact of religion as a protective factor against adolescent problem behavior; racial and ethnic disparities in substance abuse; and the role of faith-based organizations in the revitalization of urban communities, through the provision of social services, economic empowerment activities and community development.
He is the principal investigator on a five year project funded by the Skillman Foundation to evaluate it's "A Call To Service" (ACTS) faith-based initiative and is a co-investigator on the University of Michigan's on-going national study of drug use among American young people, "Monitoring the Future". Dr. Wallace's research has appeared in numerous professional journals, books and monographs including Social Work, the American Journal of Public Health, and the Journal of Studies on Alcohol. He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Michigan.
[MORE INFORMATION - CLICK TO EXPAND/COLLAPSE]
Neil Websdale
Non-Resident Scholar, Criminology
Northern Arizona University
Homepage
Email Neil Websdale
Dr. Neil Websdale is Professor of Criminal Justice at Northern Arizona University and Principal Project Advisor to and former director of the National Domestic Violence Fatality Review Initiative. He has published work on domestic violence, the history of crime, policing, social change, and public policy. Dr. Websdale has published four books including: Rural Woman Battering and the Justice System: An Ethnography (Sage), 1998, which won the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Outstanding Book Award (1999); Understanding Domestic Homicide (Northeastern University Press), 1999; Making Trouble: Cultural Constructions of Crime, Deviance, and Control (Aldine, co-edited with Jeff Ferrell), 1999; and, Policing the Poor: From Slave Plantation to Public Housing (Northeastern University Press), 2001, winner of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Outstanding Book Award (2002) and the Gustavus-Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights Award (2002). He is currently working on a book titled Familicidal Hearts, due to be published by Oxford University Press in 2008.
His social policy work consists of helping establish a national network of domestic violence fatality review teams. He has also worked on issues related to community policing, full faith and credit, and a number of other community justice initiatives.
Dr. Websdale trained as a sociologist at the University of London, England and currently lives and works in Flagstaff, Arizona.
[MORE INFORMATION - CLICK TO EXPAND/COLLAPSE]
Dedong Wei
Non-Resident Scholar
ESVIC Project, The Empirical Study of Values in China
Email Dedong Wei
View Curriculum Vitae
Wei Dedong is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Renmin University of China, Beijing, specializing in Buddhist philosophy and empirical research on religion in China. He earned his BA in Philosophy from Nankai University and his MA and Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies at Renmin University. He has published numerous articles in scholarly journals on Buddhism, sociology of religion, and philosophy of religion. He is the editor of the Chinese Journal of the Social Scientific Study of Religion.
James K. Wellman, Jr.
Non-Resident Scholar, Comparative Religions
Jackson School of International Studies
University of Washington
Email James Wellman
Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
James Wellman is Associate Professor and Chair of the Comparative Religion at the Jackson School of International Studies. He has been at the University of Washington since 2002. He teaches in the area of American religious culture, history and politics. He has published an award-winning book, The Gold Church and the Ghetto: Christ and Culture in Mainline Protestantism (Illinois 1999). He has published two edited volumes, The Power of Religious Publics: Staking Claims in American Society (Praegers 1999); the second edited volume, Belief and Bloodshed: Religion and Violence Across Time and Tradition (Rowman and Littlefied, 2007). His most recent book is Evangelical vs. Liberal: The Clash of Christian Cultures in the Pacific Northwest published by Oxford University Press. This book comes from research on 34 vital evangelical and liberal Protestant congregations in the Pacific Northwest. He seeks to understand and explain the rise and vitality of churched religion in a traditionally unchurched region. He is the project director of a grant from the $300,000 Luce Foundation on “Religion and Human Security.” He will edit a volume on the impact of religious non-state actors on the quality of life in human populations.
W. Bradford Wilcox
Non-Resident Scholar, Marriage & Family
University of Virginia
Email W. Bradford Wilcox
Curriculum Vitae
Homepage
Publications
W. Bradford Wilcox is assistant professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia and a member of the James Madison Society at Princeton University.
He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Virginia and his Ph.D. at Princeton University. Prior to coming to the University of Virginia, he held research fellowships at Princeton University, Yale University and the Brookings Institution.
Mr. Wilcox's research focuses on marriage and cohabitation, and on the ways that religion, gender, and children influence the quality and stability of American family life. He has published articles on marriage, cohabitation, parenting, and fatherhood in The American Sociological Review, Social Forces, The Journal of Marriage and Family and The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. His first book, Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands, (Chicago, 2004) examines the ways in which the religious beliefs and practices of American Protestant men influence their approach to parenting, household labor, and marriage. His next book, Soulmates: Religion and Relationships in Urban America, will explore the ways in which religion shapes the quality and stability of relationships among African Americans and Latinos. Mr. Wilcox is now researching the effect that gender norms, children, commitment, and religion have on the quality of contemporary American marriages.
Professor Wilcox has received the following two awards from the American Sociological Association Religion Section for his research: the Best Graduate Paper Award and the Best Article Award (with Brian Steensland et al.). His research has also been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, NBC’s Today Show, CBS News, and numerous NPR stations.
Professor Wilcox teaches courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels in statistics, family, and religion.
[MORE INFORMATION - CLICK TO EXPAND/COLLAPSE]
Daniel Williams
Baylor University
Email Daniel Williams
Recent Publications
D. H. Williams is currently Professor of Religion in Patristics and Historical Theology in the Department of Religion of Baylor University. Prior to 2002, he was Associate Professor of Theology in Patristics and Historical Theology at Loyola University Chicago, and before coming to Loyola, he served twice as pastor of American Baptist churches.
Ph.D., M.A. University of Toronto, 1991; Th.M., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1985; M.Div., Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1981; B. A., Northeastern Bible College, 1978. Ordained on September 15, 1981.
His books include works on historical and contemporary studies within Christian intellectual history. Most recently, he has written Evangelicals and Tradition: The Formative Influence of the Early Church (Baker Academic, 2005). He has also written Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants (Eerdmans, 1999) and Ambrose of Milan and the End of the Nicene Arian Conflicts (Oxford University Press, 1995). He is the editor of and contributor to The Free Church and the Early Church: Essays in Bridging the Historical and Theological Divide (Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002) and Arianism After Arius: Essays on the Development of the Fourth Century Trinitarian Conflicts (T & T Clark, 1993).
Williams has also published scholarly essays in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Journal of Early Christian Studies, Journal of Theological Studies, Church History, Studia Patristica, Scottish Journal of Theology, Interpretation and Pro Ecclesia and serves as a manuscript reviewer for Oxford University Press. While being a member of various academic societies, Williams is also on the executive board of the North American Patristic Society where he serves as chair of the Publications Committee.
[MORE INFORMATION - CLICK TO EXPAND/COLLAPSE]
Ralph Wood
Resident Senior Scholar
Baylor University
Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Email Ralph Wood
Dr. Wood received his B. A. and M.A. degrees in English from East Texas State University, as well as the M. A. and Ph. D. in Theology and Literature from the University of Chicago. His teaching and research commitments include Christian Literary Classics (especially the works of Dante, Herbert, Bunyan, Dostoevsky, and Hopkins), the Oxford Inklings (chiefly Tolkien and Lewis), as well as 20th century religion and culture (mainly Flannery O'Connor in relation to Roman Catholic theology). Before coming to Baylor, he taught for 26 years at Wake Forest University, where he won awards for distinguished teaching.
Robert Woodberry
Non-Resident Scholar
University of Texas, Austin
Email Robert Woodberry
Research: His interests include sociology of religion, political sociology, social movements, culture, comparative historical research, and quantitative methods. Area: Development; Political Sociology; Religion.
Selected Works:Dr. Woodberry's dissertation "The Shadow of Empire: Christian Missions, Colonial Policy, and Democracy in Post-Colonial Societies" and his article "Christianity and Democracy: The Pioneering Protestants" (Journal of Democracy, 2004; with Tim Shah) analyze the political consequences of religion. Articles in the American Sociological Review (1998), Social Forces (2000), Annual Review of Sociology (1998) and Blackwell Companion to Sociology (2001) evaluate survey measurement of religion, research on conservative Protestants, and an overview of the sociology of religion.
William Wubbenhorst
Non-Resident Scholar, Faith-Based & Community Initiatives
ICF Macro
Email William Wubbenhorst
William Wubbenhorst serves as a project manager for the Faith Service Forum and is the lead subject matter expert within ICF Macro in the area of faith-based and community initiatives and the establishment of faith-based and community organizations' partnerships at the local, state and federal level.
Mr. Wubbenhorst is currently working on behalf of the US Department of Labor (DOL) and the Corporation for National and Community Service's Americorps*VISTA program on projects related to those agencies' faith-based and community initiatives. For DOL, this work entails supporting the Department's efforts to develop local partnerships between workforce development boards and faith-based and community organizations to better serve hard-to-reach populations with training and employment services. The work for Americorps*VISTA involves an evaluation of the number and types of faith-based and community organization partners, along with selected profiles of model programs, particularly in the area of mentoring children of prisoners.
Prior to that, Mr. Wubbenhorst worked for 8 years in Massachusetts state government. During his time in government, Mr. Wubbenhorst was directly involved in implementing changes to state contracting policies for human service providers through pricing and performance-based contracting reforms. He has also authored and published a case study for graduate management school on efforts to reform the state's $1.4 billion purchase-of-service (POS) system for funding social service programs.
Mr. Wubbenhorst has published a number of articles pertaining to Charitable Choice and the Faith-Based/Community Initiative and served as an independent research consultant for the Center for Public Justice, conducting research on Charitable Choice and other related faith-based initiatives. He recently published an article entitled Workforce Development and the BlackChurch -- Knowledge, Interest, Commitment, and Collaborative Potential: A Memphis Case Study in the Fall 2006 edition of Social Work and Christianity. Mr. Wubbenhorst previously published an article entitled Enough About Leveling the Playing Field: What's the Playing Field? in the Spring 2003 edition of Social Work and Christianity. Mr. Wubbenhorst also published a case study entitled CVS/pharmacy: It's a Matter of Faith through the Boston University in 2006. Mr. Wubbenhorst also authored two papers through the Center for Public Justice entitled Charitable Choice in Massachusetts: An Un-tapped Resource in February of 2000 and The Pitfalls of Contracts for Funding Faith-Based Ministries in January of 1998.
Mr. Wubbenhorst received an MBA with a concentration in Public/Non-Profit management, from Boston University's School of Management. He is currently a Technical Director at Macro, International, Inc.
[MORE INFORMATION - CLICK TO EXPAND/COLLAPSE]
Yang Xiao
Non-Resident Scholar
Kenyon College
Yang Xiao is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Kenyon College. He received his Ph.D. from The New School for Social Research in 1999, and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley (1999-2000) and Harvard University (2002-2003). Before coming to Kenyon in 2003, he taught in the philosophy department at Middlebury College for two years (2000-2002). In addition to giving papers at many annual meetings of the American Philosophical Association (APA), Prof. Xiao has been an invited speaker at universities such as Stanford (1998), U Mass at Amherst (1999), New School for Social Research (1999 and 2000), Wesleyan (2000), University of St. Andrews (2002), Oxford (2002), Harvard (2003), McMaster (2004) and University of British Columbia (2004).
Prof. Xiao's research interests include ethics and moral psychology, Chinese philosophy, and philosophy of language. His publications include "Trying to Do Justice to the Concept of Justice in Confucian Ethics" (Journal of Chinese Philosophy) and "Modernity as Differentiation: Liang Qichao's Social and Political Philosophy" (Blackwell Guide to Contemporary Chinese Philosophy). His book reviews have appeared in The Philosophical Quarterly, Norte Dame Philosophical Reviews and Journal of the American Academy of Religion. In 2004, he co-edited a special issue on Chinese political philosophy with Nick Bunnin of Oxford University for the journal Contemporary Chinese Thought. In 2005, he guest-edited a special issue on moral psychology in early Chinese philosophy for the journal Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy. He has been the Book Review Editor of Dao since June 2005.
The courses Prof. Xiao has been teaching at Kenyon College are the following: Introduction to Philosophy, Introduction to Ethics, Practical Issues in Ethics, Chinese Philosophy, Philosophy of Language, Contemporary Ethical Theory and Moral Psychology.
Prof. Xiao was born in Southern China. He received his B.A. in theoretical physics from Wuhan University and his M.A. in philosophy of language from the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). From 1987 to 1993, he was a junior research fellow in the Institute of Philosophy at CASS. In 1989, he was a visiting student at Wolfson College at Oxford University, where he studied with Sir Peter Strawson. In the late 1990s, he studied with Prof. Bernard Williams at UC Berkeley.
Prof. Yang Xiao can be reached by email at xiaoy@kenyon.edu. He now lives with his wife Anna Xiao Dong Sun at Kenyon, who is a socioloigist and published writer.
Note to publishers who wish to have their scholarly books on comparative philosophy reviewed by Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy: please send your books to Prof. Yang Xiao, Department of Philosophy, Kenyon College, Gambier OH 43022.
[MORE INFORMATION - CLICK TO EXPAND/COLLAPSE]
Fenggang Yang
Non-Resident Scholar
Purdue University
Email Fenggang Yang
Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Dr. Fenggang Yang is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center on Religion and Chinese Society (CRCS) at Purdue University. He received his BA from Hebei Normal University (Shijiazhuang, China) in 1982, MA from Nankai University (Tianjin, China) in 1987, and Ph.D. from The Catholic University of America (Washington, DC) in 1997. His sociological research has focused on religious change in China and immigrant religions in the United States.
He is the author of Chinese Christians in America: Conversion, Assimilation, and Adhesive Identities (Penn State University Press 1999), the co-editor (with Tony Carnes) of Asian American Religions: The Making and Remaking of Borders and Boundaries (New York University Press 2004), and the co-editor (with Joseph B. Tamney) of State, Market, and Religions in Chinese Societies (Brill Academic Publishers 2005) and Conversion to Christianity among the Chinese (a special issue of the Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review, 2006). His articles have been published in books and in the American Sociological Review, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Sociology of Religion, Amerasia Journal, Journal of Asian American Studies, the Sociological Quarterly, and Asia Policy, including one that won the “2002 Distinguished Article Award” of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (“Transformations in New Immigrant Religions and Their Global Implications”) and one that won “2006 Distinguished Article Award” of the American Sociological Association’s Section of the Sociology of Religion (“The Red, Black, and Gray Markets of Religion in China”). His current research focuses on the political economy of religion in China, Christian ethics and market transition in China, faith and trust among business people in China, and Chinese Christian churches in the United States. He has given many invited lectures at universities and the Smithsonian Institution, and has been interviewed by the Washington Post, Seattle Times, Los Angeles Times, etc. and some newspapers in Asia.
[MORE INFORMATION - CLICK TO EXPAND/COLLAPSE]
