Daniel Winchester

Promoted to Associate Professor
Department of Sociology
dwinches@purdue.edu

Daniel Winchester completed a Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Minnesota and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in sociology at the University of Missouri. His scholarship focuses on answering questions about how culture shapes human subjectivity and action, with particular attention to the sociological study of religion. 

Dr. Winchester aims his research to empirically and theoretically account for the social and cognitive processes through which cultural phenomena like symbols, discourses, rituals, and material artifacts come to influence people’s experiences, identities, and actions. He has conducted ethnographic studies of conversions to Islam and Eastern Orthodox Christianity in the United States and a project focused on contemporary Evangelical missionary culture and global evangelization. 

Winchester is an associate editor for Sociology of Religion and serves on the editorial board of Qualitative Sociology. He has received a number of awards from the Culture and Theory sections of the American Sociological Association. His research has been published in multiple journals including Social Forces, Theory & Society, Sociological Theory, Sociology of Religion, and Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.