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Nathan Wright’s research focuses on three main areas: religion, culture, and public opinion, with special attention paid to the relationship between cultural change and cultural persistence.

He has studied historical changes to religious belief and practice within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; the preservation of both secular nationalism and the public expression of Islam in everyday life in contemporary Turkey as it seeks to enter the European Union; the changing relationship between religion and gay and lesbian sexuality over the past few decades; religious voting cleavages in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe; the relationship between social class and attitudes toward traditional marriage and childbirth; the place of the study of religion in higher academia and in sociology; the effect BBC Radio DJ John Peel had on the production and distribution of popular music; an anarchist collective in Chicago; the fate of local regional literary cultures given high rates of mobility; the history and projected future of reading traditional print materials and its relationship to the internet; and the cultural production of college textbooks. 

Wright is an Associate Professor of Sociology at ÀÏÍõÂÛ̳ and is published in many edited volumes and peer-reviewed journals including American Journal of Sociology and Annual Review of Sociology.