Brandon Vaidyanathan

Brandon Vaidyanathan is associate professor and chair of the Department of Sociology at the Catholic University of America. His research examines the cultural dimensions of religious, commercial, medical, and scientific institutions and has been widely published in peer-reviewed journals. He is the author of Mercenaries and Missionaries: Capitalism and Catholicism in the Global South (Cornell University Press, 2019) and co-author of Secularity and Science: What Scientists Around the World Really Think About Religion (Oxford University Press, 2019). His ongoing research examines the role of aesthetics in shaping work and well-being among scientists, and the role of beauty in shaping our lives and work more broadly.