Jason Sexton, PhD
Visiting Research Scholar
California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA
UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, 619 Charles E. Young Drive East, LaKretz Hall – Suite 300, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
Campus Mailcode: 149606
Jason S. Sexton studies internal structural commitments of communities and their members and how these relate to assumed cultural and theological norms that show up in social and ethical action. His research focuses closely on California and its culture, the prison and its governance structures, contemporary religion/theology, and on convergent points where these subjects intersect.
His scholarly work has been published in academic journals like Theology, International Journal of Public Theology, Religions, Ecclesial Practices, Journal of Theological Studies, and in journals of missiology and criminology. Contributions in religious studies led to his elected role as the current President of the largest, most diverse regional body of the American Academy of Religion, the Western Region. And his contributions to California studies led to his appointment as the recent Editor of the UC Press-published journal, Boom California. His academic writing has been published by presses like Routledge and Bloomsbury, while his popular writing has appeared in the LA Times, Zocalo Public Square, Los Angeles Review of Books, HarperCollins, among others.
Prior to joining the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA, he was the Interim State University Associate Dean of Academic Programs and a Visiting Fellow at the UC Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion.