Cole N. Carnesecca

This profile was current as of 2016, when he was part of the on-campus Kellogg community.

A California native, I did my undergraduate work in history and East Asian studies at Yale University and am currently in the sociology department at Notre Dame. My senior theses were on the expansion of the Little Flock indigenous Christian movement in China and the growing pressure on Chinese society created by expanding higher education opportunities and a lack of appropriate educational opportunities. China has remained central to my research as a number of my current projects – including work on collective identity formation within Christian communities and it’s effects on social engagement as well as work on the structural conditions of the emergence of an indigenous Protestant church in China – are focused there.

My quirkier research interests include work on the nature and effects of digital interactions and its implications for micro-sociological theory and another project that looks at how religion is portrayed in one of the most prevalent pop-culture products in Asia: anime.

Outside my academic work, I moonlight as a part-time youth pastor at a local church. I am also a self-proclaimed and definitely unpublished novelist and poet. I also take any opportunity to get back “home” to Asia – having traveled and lived in China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Cambodia and Thailand.