Meredith Whitnah, Ph.D.

Dr. Whitnah graduated from Gordon College with a major in gender studies through the Kenneth L Pike Honors Program. She earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in sociology at the University of Notre Dame, specializing in gender, religion, culture and social theory. She studies the role of religion in both perpetuating and mitigating different forms of social inequality, and is particularly interested in how organizations form responses to social issues. Her current book project, under contract with Rutgers University Press, is tentatively titled titled “Faith and the Fragility of Justice: Religious Responses to Gender-Based Violence in South Africa.”  This historical study investigates how faith-based NGOs in South Africa that had resisted apartheid have addressed gender-based violence.