Catalina Romero

Catalina Romero is Professor of Social Sciences at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP). Born in Lima, Peru, she received her B.A. and Professional Title in Sociology at the same university in 1970, her M.S at Iowa State University in 1972, and a Ph.D. in Sociology at the New School for Social Research in 1989. After some years teaching statistics and methods as well as urban sociology at the PCUP, she was appointed Director of the Institute Bartolomé de Las Casas- Rímac, in the city of Lima, founded by Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez, known for his book Theology of Liberation. Her major field of research and publication is the sociology of religion, studying the relation of religion to politics and civil society. She has been a Fellow of the Hellen Kellogg Institute at the University of Notre Dame in 1983 and in 2001 and a Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, 2010.

In 1993 she returned as a Professor to PCUP, where she has been Chair of the Department of Social Sciences and founder and first Director of the Graduate Program in Political Sciences. She participated in the creation of the Institute of Public Opinion, has been Dean of the School of Social Sciences (2005-2011), and currently she is the Director of the Doctoral program of Sociology at the same university.

Her focus on religion and politics is complemented by her participation in the World Values Survey organization as Peruvian Principal Investigator since 1996, and in a Latin American network to study the quality of democracy from a comparative perspective.

Her current project is to study religious diversity and its influence in politics in Peru and in Latin America.