Biography

Todd W. Ferguson, M.Div., Ph.D. is the Director of the Religion and Public Life Center at Rice University’s Boniuk Institute. He is also the Director of the Social Sciences Quantitative Methods Program and an Assistant Teaching Professor of Sociology at Rice University, and is a Fellow with Duke University’s Clergy Health Initiative. Todd leads Rice University’s undergraduate social statistics curriculum and loves training students to use large amounts of data to make discoveries about our social world.

As a sociologist of religion and a former pastor, he specializes in the study of congregations and religious leadership, with a focus on helping faith leaders cultivate strong and vibrant communities.

In his 2022 book STUCK, Todd and his co-author explored the stories of clergy who no longer wished to lead their congregations. Their research revealed that these pastors were not experiencing psychological burnout or a crisis of faith. Rather, it was the structure of the pastoral profession itself that alienated them from their sense of calling. His quantitative work has been published in journals such as Social Forces, Social Science Research, and Sociology of Religion. To discover more about his research, please go to his Google Scholar page.

He earned his Ph.D. in sociology at Baylor University and an M.Div. at Duke Divinity School. He received his B.A. in psychology from Baylor University, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Todd is married to Emma, a veterinarian, and they have two beautiful children.