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» The Earl Babbie Research Center

Check out Dr. Babbie's lastest book!

The Earl Babbie Research Center at Chapman University is dedicated to empowering students and faculty to conduct studies that address critical social, behavioral, economic, and environmental problems. The Center’s mission is to provide research support and instruction to students, faculty and the broader community, and to produce research that addresses global concerns including health disparities, human rights, social justice, peaceful solutions to social conflicts, and environmental sustainability. The Babbie Center includes four major research divisions: the Study of Population Health, the Study of Violence and Radicalization, the Study of American Fears, and the Study of Social Justice.

  • About Earl Babbie
  • Babbie Center Faculty

  • Earl Babbie wearing sunglasses

    Due to the decades-long, world-wide popularity of his textbooks in social research, Dr. Earl Babbie is one of the most famous living sociologists today. He holds the position of Campbell Professor Emeritus in Behavioral Sciences at Chapman University. He is best known for his book The Practice of Social Research (first published in 1975), currently in its 14th English edition, with numerous non-English editions. The text has been widely adopted in colleges throughout the United States and throughout other parts of the world. He is also an author of research articles and monographs. Throughout his career he has been active in the American Sociological Association and served on the ASA’s executive committee. He is also past president of the Pacific Sociological Association and California Sociological Association.

    Check out Dr. Earl Babbie's research, Solutions Without Problems.

  • Dr. Christopher Bader
    Christopher Bader is a Professor of Sociology at Chapman University and affiliated with the Institute for Religion, Economics and Society (IRES). He was principal investigator of the first two waves of the Baylor Religion Survey, a nationwide survey of US religious beliefs and the principal investigator of the the first three waves of the Chapman Survey of American Fears. He is associate director of the Association of Religion Data Archives (www.theArda.com    ), the world's largest archive of religion survey data funded by the Templeton Foundation and Lilly Foundation and supported by Penn State University and Chapman.

    Dr. Edward Day
    Associate Professor, Department of Sociology

    Dr. Justin de Leon
    Dr. Justin de Leon is the director of the Ethnic Studies program. His research focuses on Indigenous sovereignty and ontological security through storytelling and filmmaking. De Leon’s creative scholarship includes community-based filmmaking programming and a podcast focused on decolonial pedagogy.

    Dr. Ann Gordon
    Dr. Ann Gordon is an associate professor of political science. She is also the director of the Ludie and David C. Henley Social Sciences Research Laboratory. Dr. Gordon has published four books and numerous articles. She is Co-PI of the ongoing Chapman Survey of American Fears (CSAF), leading the team studying disasters and preparedness. The CSAF has been featured in over 800 print and broadcast media including the New York Times, The Huffington Post, CBS This Morning, Yahoo News, Good Housekeeping, the Washington Post, USA Today and TIME. Dr. Gordon works with emergency managers in Southern California on communicating preparedness to the public.

    Dr. Ashley Kranjac
    Dr. Ashley Wendell Kranjac is the Director of the Babbie Center and an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology. She earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from the State University of New York, Buffalo. She then completed her postdoctoral training in the Sociology Department and Kinder Institute Urban Health Program at Rice University. Her research focuses on health inequalities and population studies, with an emphasis on obesity. She investigates the role of familial, social, economic, and environmental contexts that lead to disparate health outcomes. Her research has been published in leading health, sociology, and demography journals.

    Dr. Minju Kwon
    Dr. Minju Kwon is an Assistant Professor of Political Science. She also serves as a faculty member for the Master of Arts in International Studies Program as well as an affiliated faculty member of the Department of Peace Studies. She specializes in international relations, comparative politics, and gender studies, with a regional focus on Asia. She earned her Ph.D. in Political Science with a minor in Gender Studies from the University of Notre Dame and served as a postdoctoral fellow of the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies at Notre Dame. 

    Dr. Crystal Murphy
    Dr. Crystal Murphy (department of Political Science and Director of the MA in International Studies program) researches the lived realities of foreign assistance in conflict and post-conflict zones. Striving to understand the recipient views, together with Babbie Center student fellows, she studies the effects microcredit and cash transfer program provision in South Sudan. These projects include field interviews, qualitative and quantitative data sorting and analysis.

    Dr. Hannah Ridge
    Dr. Hannah Ridge (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Political Science. Her research focuses on public opinion on democracy, ethnic and religious politics, and the Middle East. She is the author of Defining Democracy: Democratic Commitment in the Arab World. She completed her PhD in Political Science at Duke University.

    Dr. Nancy Rios-Contreras
    Dr. Nancy Rios-Contreras is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology. She earned her PhD in Criminology from the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware. Her research focuses on borders and migration, community adaptations to disasters, race and ethnicity, criminalization, social movement organizing, culture-specific programming, and qualitative methods. ​

    Dr. Peter Simi
    Pete Simi is a Professor of Sociology at Chapman University and member of the Executive Committee for the National Counterterrorism, Innovation, Technology, and Education (NCITE) Center at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. His studies rely on a developmental framework along with cognitive and cultural sociology to examine extremist movements and political violence. Much of his research has been funded by the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense, Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.


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Contact Us

The Babbie Center is located at 417 E. Walnut Street! Drop in and say hi!

Director
Ashley W. Kranjac, Ph.D. 
417 E. Walnut St.
(714) 744-7652
babbiecenter@chapman.edu