Dr. Jörg Stolz

Biography

Jörg Stolz studied general sociology, sociology of religion, economics, and philosophy in Zurich and Bielefeld. He obtained his master's degree in 1994 and defended his doctoral thesis in 1999 at the University of Zurich. He also pursued postgraduate studies in statistics at ETH Zurich from 1995 to 1997. His postdoctoral training includes research stays in Paris and Mannheim, as well as a four-month methods program at ICPSR in Ann Arbor, USA. Since October 2002, he has been a full professor of sociology of religion at the University of Lausanne. Stolz has a keen interest in sociological theory and engages in both quantitative and qualitative empirical research. Theoretically, he seeks to develop a general theory of social games and a theory of religious-secular competition. Empirically, his work focuses on religious beliefs, explaining secularization and resacralization, comparing local religious groups, Islamophobia, as well as secular and atheist beliefs. He served as the president of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion (ISSR) from 2015 to 2019 and was dean of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies from 2012 to 2016. He is currently the director of the Institute for the Social Sciences of Religion (ISSR) and is involved in many other committees. His work has been published in journals such as Nature Communications, European Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, and the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.

Research Interests

Experience