Senior Researcher and Director of Cross-National Data
bgrim@pewforum.org
Brian J. Grim is a senior researcher and director of cross-national data at the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life, specializing in international religious demography, measurement of global restrictions on religion and cross-national social regulation of religion. Brian also is a principle investigator for the international religious demography project at Boston University's Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs.
Immediately prior to joining the Pew Forum, Brian managed the international data initiative for the Association of Religion Data Archives housed at Penn State University and funded by the John Templeton Foundation and the Lilly Endowment. He was also a faculty research associate at Penn State's Survey Research Center, where he was responsible for the planning, initiation and budgeting of all modes of survey research, including focus groups.
Brian has extensive overseas experience. Before joining the Pew Forum, he worked for 20 years as an educator, researcher and development coordinator in China, the former USSR, Kazakhstan, Malta, other places in Europe and the Middle East. His research interests include quantitative measurement of international religious regulation, religious freedom and socio-religious conflict. His 2006 publication with Roger Finke in the Interdisciplinary Journal of Religious Research on Religion provides indexes of religious regulation and favoritism for 195 countries, and in an August 2007 article in American Sociological Review as well as in a 2011 book, The Price of Freedom Denied: Religion Persecution and Conflict in the 21st Century (Cambridge University Press), Brian and Finke analyze the impact of restricted religious freedom on the level of religion-related conflict. Brian is co-editor with Todd M. Johnson of the World Religion Database, an online offering of the Brill publishing company that provides international religious demographic statistics and sources for 238 countries. Brian was also a visiting researcher at Georgetown University's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and a research affiliate with the Population Research Institute at Penn State University.
Brian received his Ph.D. and an M.A. in sociology from the Pennsylvania State University, an M.A. in teaching English to speakers of other languages from William Carey International University in Pasadena, Calf. and a B.A. in sociology from the University of Delaware. He also completed formal language studies at Inlingua Sprachschule in Germany and Kazakh State University, and theological studies at The Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Ky.