Richie Li

Dr. Ruiqian (Richie) Li is a Senior Researcher at the Polarization & Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Baylor University and dual Master of Arts degrees in Political Science from Boston College and Claremont Graduate University. Dr. Li’s research explores the intersections between religion and secular forces—political and economic—and their impact on ethnocultural nationalism and symbolic violence, such as Christian statism and American gun culture. An award-winning sociologist, his work is published in several academic journals, and he brings six years of experience in social survey data, including five years with the world’s largest religion data archive, the ARDA.