Brian J. Grim

Senior Researcher

Brian J. Grim is a senior researcher at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, specializing in international religious demography, measurement of global religious freedom and cross-national social regulation of religion. Brian also is a research affiliate with the Population Research Institute at Penn State University.

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, Europe, Malta 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 provides indexes of religious regulation and favoritism for 195 countries of the world, and in an August 2007 article in the American Sociological Review, Grim and Finke analyze the impact of restricted religious freedom on the level of religion-related conflict. Grim 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.

Grim received his Ph.D. and an M.A. in sociology from the Pennsylvania State University, an M.A. in TESOL from William Carey International University and a B.A. in sociology from the University of Delaware. He did formal language studies at inlingua Sprachschule and Kazakh State University, and theological studies at Southern Seminary, Louisville, Ky.