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Religion in a Changing Workplace
September 5th, 2025 | 7:30pm
Physical Sciences 120 or via Zoom
Appetizer reception to follow
Employees are increasingly embracing the notion of “bringing their whole selves to work,” and many employers are encouraging them. Those whole selves often include religious identities, however, and that can make things complicated. Employers can be uncertain about how to respond to workers’ religious identities and afraid that such expression will lead to conflict. Sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund and her collaborators Denise Daniels and Christopher P. Scheitle have conducted more than 15,000 surveys and 300 in-depth interviews on the subject of faith at work in the US. Hear from Rice University Professor and Cornell PhD alumna Elaine Howard Ecklund on how workers in many different fields experience the intersection of their religious identities and their work. Based on her book Religion in a Changing Workplace (Oxford University Press, 2024), Dr. Ecklund’s lecture will help leaders of all beliefs understand how to negotiate increasingly pluralistic workplaces for the good of all.
Dr. Elaine Howard Ecklund; Herbert S. Autrey Chair in Social Sciences, Professor of Sociology; Director, Boniuk Institute for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance
Elaine Howard Ecklund is a sociologist, author, and leader who explores how individuals and groups bring their deepest values—especially religious and ethical commitments—into their work, leadership, and public lives. She holds a Herbert S. Autrey Chair in Social Sciences at Rice University, where she is a Professor of Sociology and directs the Boniuk Institute for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance.
Elaine has published nine books, over 150 academic articles, and led nearly twenty national and international research projects on religion, science, institutional culture, and workplace religious diversity. Her work is widely recognized for revealing how pluralism—when understood and supported—can be an asset rather than a liability in professional life.
Known for building interdisciplinary teams and convening global gatherings, Elaine brings clarity to topics often burdened by division rather than dialogue.
Her current work focuses on religious diversity in the workplace, mentoring as a model of institutional leadership, and how faith and science intersect in public life.
Her latest books include Religion in a Changing Workplace (OUP, 2024) and Working for Better (IVP, 2025) as well as Varieties of Atheism in Science (OUP, 2021) and Why Science and Faith Need Each Other (Brazos, 2020).
She received a Ph.D. from Cornell University, where she was the recipient of the Graduate Student Baccalaureate Award for Academic Excellence and Community Service. In 2018, she gave the Gifford Lecture at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and in 2023 received the Rice University Presidential Mentoring Award. Ecklund is interested in university leadership and in new approaches to mentoring. She is privileged to have worked with multiple postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and undergraduate students in research, and she is interested in supporting institutional growth, both at Rice University and in academic organizations more broadly. To that end she served nine years as Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Sociology at Rice, founded the Religion and Public Life Program at Rice in 2010 and served as director for 12 years, was president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR), president of the Religious Research Association (RRA), and has served on various university evaluation and research committees. Find out more at elainehowardecklund.com.
