Karen Hooge Michalka

Karen Hooge Michalka (she/her) is a sociologist of culture, immigration, and religion. Her work seeks to illuminate how local communities impact the acculturation and integration of new arrivals. Working from a cultural orientation and qualitative methodology, she investigates local communities where shared logics of identity and acculturation are negotiated and maintained through regular ritual practices. Dr. Michalka is a 2021-2022 Public Fellow with the Public Religion Research Institute covering immigration and migration. Her current scholarship includes a study of Protestant immigrant Latino congregations and the opportunities and challenges faced by refugees and immigrants in a rural mid-western community. Previous research has been published in Qualitative Sociology and the Journal of Contemporary Religion and she is a member of the American Sociological Association and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.