The Center for the Study of Religion and Society (CSRS) is a research center at the

University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin founded the school in 1842. The main campu ...

in the United States that is dedicated to advancing social scientific understanding of

religion Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, ...

in society through scholarly research, training, and publications. The center brings a variety of faculty, students, and other researchers together into a community of scholars engaged in

empirical Empirical evidence for a proposition is evidence, i.e. what supports or counters this proposition, that is constituted by or accessible to sense experience or experimental procedure. Empirical evidence is of central importance to the sciences and ...

investigations, intellectual interchange and teaching crucial for advancing the

sociological Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation and ...

study of religion. Activities facilitated by CSRS include major data collection projects,

seminars A seminar is a form of academic instruction, either at an academic institution or offered by a commercial or professional organization. It has the function of bringing together small groups for recurring meetings, focusing each time on some parti ...

, colloquia,

lectures A lecture (from Latin ''lēctūra'' “reading” ) is an oral presentation intended to present information or teach people about a particular subject, for example by a university or college teacher. Lectures are used to convey critical inform ...

conferences A conference is a meeting of two or more experts to discuss and exchange opinions or new information about a particular topic. Conferences can be used as a form of group decision-making, although discussion, not always decisions, are the main pu ...

, grant writing, and the building of an infrastructure for survey, interviews-based, and participant-observation

social research Social research is a research conducted by social scientists following a systematic plan. Social research methodologies can be classified as quantitative and qualitative. * Quantitative designs approach social phenomena through quantifiable ...

. The center combines an emphasis on the insight and richness of cultural analysis with the strength of large-scale

survey research In research of human subjects, a survey is a list of questions aimed for extracting specific data from a particular group of people. Surveys may be conducted by phone, mail, via the internet, and also at street corners or in malls. Surveys are us ...

. Christian Smith of the University of Notre Dame is the director of CSRS and the principal investigator on a number of the center's current research projects.

References

* Religion and society Schools of religion Social science institutes University of Notre Dame {{reli-studies-stub