Daniel Winchester

Ph.D., Sociology, University of Minnesota (2013) M.A., Sociology, University of Missouri (2006) Daniel Winchester joined the Purdue faculty in 2014. Most broadly, his scholarship focuses on answering questions about how culture shapes human subjectivity and action, with particular attention to the sociological study of religion. His research aims to empirically and theoretically account for the social and cognitive processes through which cultural phenomena like rituals, symbols, narratives, bodily techniques/ practices, and material artifacts come to influence people's experiences of themselves and the world around them. Among other research projects, Dan has conducted ethnographic studies of religious conversions to Islam and Eastern Orthodox Christianity in the United States and is currently writing a book analyzing how and with what consequences Evangelical missionary organizations produce particular images and understandings of “the global”. The book is tentatively entitled, The World is a Mission Field: Mission Mobilization and the Evangelical Global Imaginary . His research has appeared in journals such as Social Forces, Sociological Theory, Theory & Society, Poetics, Sociology of Religion, and Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion and received awards from the Culture, Religion, and Theory Sections of the American Sociological Association.