DEPARTMENT OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES

Elizabeth Shakman Hurd is Professor and Chair of Religious Studies and Professor of Political Science. She studies the politics of religion in the US at home and abroad, secularism and religious freedom, American borders, the US in the Middle East, and the intersections of political theory and political theology. She co-directs the Global Religion & Politics Research Group, and is a core faculty member in the MENA Studies program. Her CV is here.

Her major publications include:

• Heaven Has a Wall: Religion, Borders, and the Global United States (Chicago, 2025)
• The Politics of Secularism in International Relations (Princeton, 2008)
• Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion (Princeton, 2015)
• At Home and Abroad: The Politics of American Religion (co-editor, Columbia, 2021)
• Theologies of American Exceptionalism (co-editor, Indiana, 2019, 2021 (paper)
• Politics of Religious Freedom (co-editor, Chicago, 2015)
• Symposium, “Re-Thinking Religious Freedom,” Journal of Law and Religion (co-editor, 2014)
• Comparative Secularisms in a Global Age (co-editor, Palgrave, 2013)

Professor Hurd teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on religion and politics; law and religion; American borders; the politics of religious diversity; and the US and/in the Middle East. She advises graduate students interested in these topics as well as international political theory, political ethnography, methods in the study of religion and politics, and the global United States.

Information for prospective graduate students is here.

Hurd co-curates, with Winnifred Sullivan, the open access Teaching Law and Religion Case Study Archive offering legal cases and background materials for teaching on the intersections of law, religion, and politics around the world.

Awards

• Northwestern Buffett Faculty Collaboration Grant - “Insubordinate Religiosities, Social Protests and Uneasy Democracies Today.” With Carlos Manrique, Universidad de los Andes. April 2024.
• Northwestern Weinberg Center for International & Area Studies - “Global Epistemological Politics of Religion: Works in Progress.” Symposium Grant. June 2023.
• Northwestern Weinberg College Covid-19 Research Recovery Grant - “American Border Religion.” 2023.
• International Relations/Buffett Institute International Classroom Partnering Grant, “Global Conversations on Religion, Race, & Politics,” 2020-21; 2021-22.
• Northwestern Buffett Virtual Visitorship Grant, hosting Dmytro Vovk - Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University, Kharkiv, Ukraine, 2022.
• 2019 ACLS/Luce Fellowship in Religion, Journalism and International Affairs. Project: “Religion on the Border.”
• 2018 Daniel I. Linzer Grant for Innovation in Diversity and Equity. “Law and the Politics of Religious Diversity”
• 2018-2022. Luce/ACLS Grant, Religion, Journalism & International Affairs, “Talking Religion: Publics, Politics, and the Media” (co-PI with Brannon Ingram)
• Buffett Faculty Fellowship, 2016-2019. Northwestern Buffett.
• Luce Initiative on Religion in International Affairs, “Politics of Religion at Home and Abroad” (co-PI with Winnifred Sullivan of Indiana University, $400,000), 2016-2019.
• “Big Ideas” Faculty Innovation Grant, Northwestern Buffett, 2015.
• Faculty Fellowship, Kaplan Institute for the Humanities. Northwestern, 2015-16.
• Luce Initiative on Religion in International Affairs, “Politics of Religious Freedom: Contested Norms and Local Practices” (co-PI with Saba Mahmood, (UC-Berkeley), Winnifred Fallers Sullivan (Indiana University), & Peter Danchin (Maryland Law), 2011-14, $500,000).
• Luce Initiative on Religion in International Affairs, “Thinking about Religion, Law, and Politics.” Workshop Grant, with Winnifred Sullivan and Robert Orsi. July 2014.
• 2014 Weber Award - best paper in religion and politics presented at the 2013 APSA meeting for “The ‘Religious Offensive’: The Politics of Religious Engagement.”