Gastón Espinosa, Ph.D.

Professor Gastón Espinosa is the Arthur V. Stoughton Professor of Religious Studies at Claremont McKenna College and was a 2016-2017 Visiting Scholar in the Department of Politics at Princeton University.  He served two-terms as President of La Comunidad of Hispanic Scholars of Religion at the American Academy of Religion, two-terms on the American Academy of Religion Committee on Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Professions (CREM), and was named an National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the NHC Institute for Advanced Studies in Raleigh-Durham.

From 1999-2002, he served as project manager and director of research of $1.3 million The Pew Charitable Trusts Hispanic Churches in American Public Life study.  Since 1998, he has directed 8 social science research surveys:  Latino Pentecostal and Methodist Women in Ministry Survey 1998 (n = 200), Hispanic Churches in American Public Life National Survey 2000 (n = 2,310), Latino Religious Leaders Survey 2001 (n = 205), Latino Civic Leaders Survey 2001 (n = 229), Latino Religions and Politics National Survey 2008 (n = 1,102), Latino Religions and Politics National Survey 2012 (n = 1,000), Latino Muslims in American Public Life Survey 2014 (n = 560), and Latino Religions and Politics National Survey 2020 (n = 1,292).  He is currently preparing the Latino Muslims in America Survey for the Fall 2022.

Dr. Espinosa served as Chair of the Department of Religious Studies, Chair of the 5 Claremont Colleges Religious Studies Program, and Chair of the 7 Claremont Colleges Committee on Religious Affairs (CORA).

His work has appeared in many publications including, The Annals of American Political and Social Sciences, Social Compass: International Review of the Sociology of Religion, The Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Religion, and The Journal of the American Academy of Religion.

He has given almost 200 scholarly presentations at universities and centers around the world, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Dartmouth, Chicago, Notre Dame, Northwestern, UCLA, USC, UC Berkeley, UCI, University of Heidelberg (Germany), University of Munster (Germany), University of Halle-Wittenberg (Germany), Science Po (CERI) (France), Ecoles Institute (France), University of Paris (VII, XII), Uppsala University (Sweden), Lund University (Sweden), Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, I.I. Mechnikov National University of Odesa, V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, BBC, National Public Radio (NPR) and the National Press Club in Washington, DC., among other places.  His thoughts and opinions have been cited numerous times in the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning News, and many other newspapers across the U.S.

He is the author/editor of eight books, including Latino Pentecostals in America: Faith and Politics in Action (Harvard University Press), William J. Seymour and the Origins of Global Pentecostalism: A Biography and Documentary History (Duke University Press), Religion, Race, and Barack Obama's New Democratic Pluralism (Routledge Publishers), Religion, Race, and the American Presidency (Rowman & Littlefield), Religion and the American Presidency: George Washington to George W. Bush (Columbia University Press), Mexican American Religions: Spirituality, Activism and Culture (Duke University Press), Rethinking Latino/a Religions and Identity (Pilgrim Press), and U.S. Latino Religions and Civic Activism in the United States (Oxford University Press).

He is currently finishing Latino Religions and Politics in American Public Life and serves as co-editor of The Columbia University Press Series in Religion and Politics.