President-Elect Biography

Wendy Cadge, a sociologist, is a nationally renowned expert in contemporary American spirituality and religion. She is known for her work on religion in public institutions, religious diversity, pluralism, and as a highly respected educator, scholar, and administrator. A public intellectual, she has written more than one hundred scholarly and general interest articles, many in collaboration with students and colleagues across disciplines, and three books on issues related to spiritual care across settings, religion in hospitals, and Buddhism in the United States.

Cadge has been the Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) since 2021 and is the Barbara Mandel Professor of the Humanistic Social Sciences at Brandeis University. At GSAS, she has centered the graduate student experience by rebuilding and expanding student professional development, collaborating to extend degree programs into new modalities, advancing the graduate school’s anti-racism plan, and reconnecting current students and alumni to celebrate the school’s 70th anniversary.

Cadge launched the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab in 2018 to advance the work of chaplains in providing innovative spiritual care and frequently works with the media and community partners. Her work on Boston’s Hidden Sacred Spaces was supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and included a photography exhibit that traveled across Massachusetts. Her research and teaching have been supported by groups including the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, Fetzer Institute, Henry Luce Foundation, John Templeton Foundation, Lovell Foundation, Radcliffe Institute, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research Program, Ruderman Family Foundation, Russell Berrie Foundation, Templeton Religion Trust, and The Charles H. Revson Foundation.

A faculty member at Brandeis University since 2006, she taught classes in Sociology; Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies; Religious Studies; and Health: Science, Society, and Policy. She received the Thomas A. King Faculty Award from the Gender & Sexuality Center as well as the Dean of Art and Sciences Mentoring Award for Outstanding Teaching of Students in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Michael Walzer '56 Award for Excellence in Teaching. She previously served as the Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives, when she built the university’s first Office of Undergraduate Research & Creative Collaboration to expand and make accessible research opportunities for all undergraduates. She has led the Division of Social Sciences and chaired the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Program. She served as a faculty representative to the Board of Trustees, on the presidential search committee, and chaired the Faculty Governance Task Force, a three-year initiative to improve faculty’s role in shared governance. She served on the faculty at Bowdoin College from 2003-2006.

Cadge is a member of the American Sociological Association (ASA), the American Academy of Religion (AAR), and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR). She is a founder and past chair of the Innovations in Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care Program Unit of the AAR. She is a previous chair of the Religion Section and the Committee on Professional Ethics of the ASA. Her published books include 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. She is co-editor of Introduction to Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care and Religion on the Edge: De-Centering and Re-centering the Sociology of Religion.

She received a bachelor’s degree with high honors and majors in Sociology and Anthropology, and Religion, from Swarthmore College, and a master’s and her Ph.D. from Princeton University. More information about her background and publications is on her website here.