The Center for the Study of Religion and Society (CSRS) is a research center at the University of Notre Dame

University of Notre Dame

The University of Notre Dame du Lac is a Catholic research university located in Notre Dame, an unincorporated community north of the city of South Bend, in St. Joseph County, Indiana, United States...

 in the United States that is dedicated to advancing social scientific understanding of religion

Religion

Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...

 in society

Society

A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...

 through scholarly research

Research

Research can be defined as the scientific search for knowledge, or as any systematic investigation, to establish novel facts, solve new or existing problems, prove new ideas, or develop new theories, usually using a scientific method...

, training

Training

The term training refers to the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies as a result of the teaching of vocational or practical skills and knowledge that relate to specific useful competencies. It forms the core of apprenticeships and provides the backbone of content at institutes of...

 and publications. The Center brings a variety of faculty

Faculty (university)

A faculty is a division within a university comprising one subject area, or a number of related subject areas...

, students and other researchers together into a community of scholars engaged in empirical

Empirical

The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation or experimentation. Empirical data are data produced by an experiment or observation....

 investigations, intellectual interchange and teaching crucial for advancing the sociological study of religion.

Activities facilitated by CSRS include major data collection projects, seminars, colloquia, lectures, conferences

Academic conference

An academic conference or symposium is a conference for researchers to present and discuss their work. Together with academic or scientific journals, conferences provide an important channel for exchange of information between researchers.-Overview:Conferences are usually composed of various...

, grant writing and the building of an infrastructure for survey, interviews-based, and participant-observation social research

Social research

Social research refers to research conducted by social scientists. Social research methods may be divided into two broad categories:* Quantitative designs approach social phenomena through quantifiable evidence, and often rely on statistical analysis of many cases to create valid and reliable...

. The Center combines an emphasis on the insight and richness of cultural analysis

Cultural analysis

As a discipline, cultural analysis is based on using qualitative research methods of the social sciences, in particular ethnography and anthropology, to collect data on cultural phenomena; in an effort to gain new knowledge or understanding through analysis of that data...

 with the strength of large-scale survey research

Survey research

Survey research a research method involving the use of questionnaires and/or statistical surveys to gather data about people and their thoughts and behaviours. This method was pioneered in the 1930s and 1940s by sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld. The initial use of the method was to examine the effects...

.

Christian Smith of the University of Notre Dame is the director of CSRS and the principal investigator on a number of the Center's current research projects.