Wendy Cadge

Wendy Cadge is the Barbara Mandel Professor of Humanistic Social Sciences and Professor of Sociology at Brandeis University. She is an expert in contemporary American religion, especially related to religion in public institutions, religious diversity, religious and moral aspects of healthcare, and religion and immigration. She is the author of three books, Spiritual Care: The Everyday Work of Chaplains, Paging God: Religion in the Halls of Medicine and Heartwood: The First Generation of Theravada Buddhism in America, and a co-editor of Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care in the Twenty-First Century and Religion on the Edge: De-Centering and Re-Centering the Sociology of Religion. She founded and co-directed the Transforming Chaplaincy Project from 2015 to 2019, and in 2018 launched the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab. A public intellectual, she recently wrote or has been quoted in the Atlantic, the Economist, the BBC, and on WBUR. She has published more than eighty articles and raised more than $8 million in support of her own research and teaching and that of students and colleagues. On June 1, 2021, she started a three-year term as Dean of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at Brandeis University. She previously served as the Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives (2019-2021), the Social Science Division Head (2018-2021), and Chair of the Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Program (2013-2018) in the School of Arts & Sciences at Brandeis University. She was also a Faculty Representative to the Board of Trustees (2014-2019) and co-chair of the Faculty Governance Task Force (2017-2019) representing faculty across the university.