Berkley Center

Mary Ellen Konieczny is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame. Her research interests revolve around the broad themes of religion and family life, and religion in American democracy. She is particularly interested in exploring how culture and social processes in local contexts intersect with discourse and politics in the public sphere. Her dissertation study, an ethnography of liberal and conservative Catholic parishes, was published as The Spirit’s Tether: Family, Work and Religion among American Catholics (2013). Her current book project is an historical and qualitative study of religion at the US Air Force Academy in which she explores religion in the military, and the historical changes in and tensions between the disestablishment of religion and its free exercise. Konieczny has a B.S. from the University of Notre Dame, M.Div. from the Weston Jesuit School of Theology, and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.