Elizabeth (Beth) Shakman Hurd is Professor and Chair of Religious Studies and Professor of Political Science at Northwestern . She studies religion and politics in U.S. foreign and immigration policy, religion and American borders, and the U.S. in the Middle East. She co-directs the Global Religion Research Group at Northwestern, and co-curates the Teaching Law & Religion Case Archive. She is currently finishing a book on American border religion.

View CV here.

Hurd’s books include The Politics of Secularism in International Relations (2008) and Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion (2015), both published by Princeton. She is co-editor of Theologies of American Exceptionalism (Indiana University Press, 2021), At Home and Abroad: The Politics of American Religion (Columbia, 2021), Politics of Religious Freedom (University of Chicago Press, 2015) and Comparative Secularisms in a Global Age (Palgrave, 2010). 

At Northwestern Hurd currently chairs the Religious Studies Department, co-directs the Global Religion Faculty Research Group, is a core faculty member in the Program on Middle East and North African Studies and oversees a graduate certificate program in Religion & Global Politics.

Beth Hurd lives in Evanston with Ian Hurd and their three daughters, two dogs, a cat, and an opinionated cockatiel.