The Institute for Religion, Culture and Societal Futures (IRCSF) is Canada’s hub for social scientific and empirical research related to religion, spirituality, and emerging forms of communities of belief and practice. The IRCSF is non-partisan, and brings together both resident and visiting scholars working in the fields of sociology of religion and the social scientific study of religion to support undergraduate and graduate students, community organizations, faith groups, schools, the media, and the general public in better understanding the religious landscape of Canada and connections between religion, spirituality, secularity and other aspects of public and social life. The IRCSF hosts talks and workshops, publishes reports, media releases and social media posts, and provides consulting services.
Institute Leadership
Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme, Director
Professor Wilkins-Laflamme has been teaching at the University of Waterloo’s Department of Sociology and Legal Studies since 2015. She is currently an associate professor there. Her research areas are sociology of religion, quantitative methods, race, ethnicity and immigration, political sociology and social change. Her books include 1) None of the Above: Nonreligious Identity in the US and Canada, co-authored with Joel Thiessen and published in 2020 with New York University Press; 2) Religion at the Edge: Nature, Spirituality, and Secularity in the Pacific Northwest, co-edited with Paul Bramadat and Patricia Killen and published in 2022 with British Columbia University Press; and 3) Religion, Spirituality and Secularity among Millennials: The Generation Shaping American and Canadian Trends, published in 2022 with Routledge.
Click here to learn more about Professor Wilkins-Laflamme and her work.
Carol Ann MacGregor, Associate Director
Carol Ann MacGregor has served as Vice President Academic and Dean (VPAD) at St. Jerome's University since 2021. She is tenured faculty in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at St. Jerome's and was previously an Associate Professor of Sociology at Loyola University New Orleans. Her research on Catholic K-12 education, religious non-affiliation, and religion and civic engagement, has appeared in journals including American Catholic Studies, American Sociological Review, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, and Social Science Research. Her work has received Outstanding Article awards from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the American Sociological Association's Section of Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity.
Click here to learn more about Carol Ann MacGregor and her work.
Galen Watts, Associate Director
Galen Watts is an Assistant Professor in the Sociology and Legal Studies department at the University of Waterloo. Between 2020-2022 he was a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow based jointly at KU Leuven and the University of Toronto. His first book, The Spiritual Turn: The Religion of the Heart and the Making of Romantic Liberal Modernity, published in 2022 with Oxford University Press, won the 2023 Society for the Study of Religion’s Distinguished Book Award. He has published articles in venues such as Journal of the American Academy of Religion, American Journal of Cultural Sociology, Civic Sociology, The Sociological Review, and European Journal of Social Theory.
Click here to learn more about Galen Watts and his work.
Research Fellows
Kevin N. Flatt, Research Fellow
Kevin N. Flatt is a Professor of History and the Associate Dean of Humanities at Redeemer University. His scholarship focuses on two main themes: Protestantism in Canada and secularization in modern societies. His first book, After Evangelicalism: The Sixties and the United Church of Canada (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013) examines the transformation and decline of Canada’s largest Protestant denomination in the twentieth century. His articles and chapters have appeared in venues including Sociology of Religion, the Oxford Handbook on Early Evangelicalism, and the Review of Religious Research. His research has received national and international media coverage from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, CBC Radio, Maclean's magazine, the National Post, the Globe & Mail, and the New York Times. His current project, a book on the relationship between secularization and social order in global perspective, is under contract with Routledge.
Visit Kevin N. Flatt's profile to learn more about him and his work.
Miray Philips, Research Fellow
Miray Philips is an Assistant Professor in Sociology at the University of Toronto. Her work focuses on the transnational politics, meaning, and memory of violence and suffering between the United States and the Middle East. Her research is published in scholarly journals such as the American Journal of Cultural Sociology, Memory Studies, and the Minnesota Journal of International Law. Miray Philips also engages in public-facing work. She currently sits on the Board of Advisors of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy and has previously worked with Minority Rights Group International and the United Nations.
Visit Miray Philips' profile to learn more about her and her work.
Student Fellows
Jacob Legault-Leclair, Student Fellow
Jacob Legault-Leclair is a doctoral student in Sociology at the University of Waterloo. He specializes in sociology of religion and quantitative methods. For his PhD dissertation, he is studying the cross-national effects of religious transmission and immigration on processes of religious change. His other academic projects focus on the links between social attitudes and religion, gender and religion, and religious immigration in Quebec and Canada.
Hannah Vines, Student Fellow
Hannah Vines is a graduate MA student in Sociology at the University of Waterloo. Her research interests include the intersections of technology, moral philosophy, and spirituality. Her research explores the deeply spiritual and moral narratives that surrounded the internet's conception, the evolution of these narratives in contemporary digital spaces, and the implications for our personal, social and spiritual lives in an increasingly virtual world.
Madeline Cranston, Student Fellow
Madeline Cranston is a graduate MA student in Sociology at the University of Waterloo. Her areas of focus include digital culture, social solidarity, civic engagement, and restorative justice. With a history of public speaking and youth activism, she is invested in examining sustainable practices for meaningful collective life in the internet age. Her academic work has been recognized by the University of Waterloo's Departmental Awards: Distinguished Academic Achievement in Sociology (2025) and Outstanding Academic Achievement in Communication Arts & Design Practice (2025).
Events
Upcoming Events
Dr. Gary J. Adler Jr. | Catholic in Governing, not Catholicism in Government: How Local Government Officials Manage Interaction between Religion and State
The Institute for Religion, Culture and Societal Futures (IRCSF) is partnering with St Jerome's University's Lectures in Catholic Experience series to welcome Gary J. Adler for his talk "Catholic in Governing, not Catholicism in Government: How Local Government Officials Manage Interaction between Religion and State."
This free event will be held in person at St. Jerome's or virtually online on Thursday, January 15th, 2026 from 7:30pm-9pm EST.
To attend the event either in person or online, please visit our registration page.
Richard Madsen, William Sullivan, Ann Swidler, Steven Tipton | Habits of the Heart, Then and Now - A 40th Anniversary Retrospective
The Institute for Religion, Culture and Societal Futures (IRCSF) will be hosting a virtual webinar titled "Habits of the Heart, Then and Now - A 40th Anniversary Retrospective," to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the seminal book Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life with its four living authors Richard Madsen from UC San Diego, William Sullivan, Ann Swidler from UC Berkeley, and Steven Tipton from Emory University.
This free event on Zoom will take place from 1-2pm EST on Thursday, January 22nd, 2026.
To attend the virtual event, please visit our registration page.
Past Events
"Secularization, Social Order, and World History: Toward a Global Perspective" with Kevin Flatt
Book launch recording available on the IRCSF YouTube channel
"Planting Seeds: The Catholic parish in the Religious Transmission Ecosystem" with Joel Thiessen
"Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith" with Christian Smith
“Yogalands: In Search of Practice on the Mat and in the World,” with Paul Bramadat
“What If There Is No Such Thing As Religion? Implications for Secularization Theory,” with Kevin N. Flatt
“Dynamics of (Non)Religious Modernity: Dispatches from Baby-Boomers in Quebec,” with Géraldine Mossière
“Transnational Politics of Christian Persecution between the United States and Middle East,” with Miray Philips
“The State and Future of the Sociology of Religion in Canada,” with Lori Beaman, Jacob Legault-Leclair, Sam Reimer and Joel Thiessen
"The Study of Religion in Canada and the Launch of the IRCSF,” with Carol Ann MacGregor, Galen Watts and Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme
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