My dissertation asks: how do people navigate institutional life together amid deep differences? The demographic and ideological pluralism that marks modern societies is unprecedented. We are encountering diverse contexts that pose challenges to us as individuals, as well as any hope of forging deep community and cultivating shared institutions.

My second line of research asks: when and how do organizations contribute to the production of meaning, community, and integration? Sociologists have shown that the presence of organizations causally affects such outcomes as connectedness, social capital, crime, entrepreneurship, and crisis resilience.