Syed Raza joined Kenyon’s Department of Sociology in July 2026. He earned his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.P.H. in sociomedical sciences from Columbia University. His research asks how people give moral meaning to institutions that often appear technical, economic or secular.

Raza’s current project, based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Chicago metropolitan area, examines Islamic finance as a site where Muslims debate religious authority, economic practice, capitalism, and everyday moral responsibility. He is also developing new research on how emerging technologies and bioethical questions, including artificial intelligence, are being interpreted, debated, and incorporated in Muslim religious and communal life.

More broadly, Raza works across social theory, historical sociology, cultural political economy, mixed methods and South Asian studies to study religion, expertise, inequality, democracy, development and belonging. Before sociology, he worked in public health research in New York City on disability, access and inequality.

Areas of Expertise

Cultural political economy, religion and secularity, knowledge and expertise, global sociology

Education

2026 — Doctor of Philosophy from Univ Texas Austin

2017 — Masters in Public Health from Columbia University

2013 — Bachelor of Science from University of Kentucky

Courses Recently Taught

Special Topic

This course introduces students to the field of sociology through the study of social inequalities as they are created, maintained, and challenged within the institutions of our everyday lives. This course covers major themes in sociology by exploring how society operates within and through social institutions; how those institutions create and maintain social norms that disenfranchise some while privileging others; and how individuals challenge those norms to enact change in their everyday lives, local communities, and society at large. This course analyzes social structures and their impact on the experiences of individuals. We look at the ways in which social structures construct and constrain reality for individuals and how society and social institutions shape individual values, attitudes, and behaviors. The course examines sociological concepts through an analysis of culture, social inequality, social institutions, social movements, and social change. By the end of the course, students should understand common sociological concepts and perspectives and be able to consider aspects of the social world through the sociological lens. Students may take only one introductory-level course. This counts toward the foundation requirement for the major. No prerequisite. Offered every year.

This course examines science and technology as social phenomena and asks how scientific knowledge and technological systems are produced, authorized and contested. What makes something count as scientific knowledge? How do particular forms of expertise acquire authority? To what extent are scientific practices shaped by social institutions, political interests, cultural assumptions and relations of power? And how, in turn, do science and technology transform social relations and understandings of nature, society and the self? We approach these questions through theoretical, historical, comparative and ethnographic perspectives, drawing on sociology as well as history, anthropology, philosophy and the interdisciplinary field of science and technology studies. The course examines major debates concerning scientific knowledge, rationality, expertise, technological change and modernity, while using selected case studies to investigate how science and technology operate in practice across different societies and historical contexts. Topics include the Scientific Revolution, laboratories and scientific communities, industrial technologies, scientific expertise, colonial science, nuclear weapons, biotechnology and public health, environmental risk, artificial intelligence and algorithms. Throughout the course, students develop conceptual and comparative tools for analyzing how societies determine what counts as knowledge, who gets to speak with authority, how technologies become embedded in everyday life, and how ideas of progress and possible futures are socially constructed and contested. Prerequisite: 100-level sociology course or permission of instructor.