Brandon Vaidyanathan is Associate Professor of Sociology at The Catholic University of America. He was born and raised in the Arabian Gulf. He holds a master’s degree in Management from HEC Montreal and a doctorate in Sociology from the University of Notre Dame. His research examines the cultural dimensions of religious, commercial, medical, and scientific institutions, and has been published in journals such as Business and Society, Social Problems, Social Forces, Sociology of Religion, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, and Journal of the American Academy of Religion. His first book, Mercenaries and Missionaries: Global Capitalism and Global Christianity in Emerging Economies (Cornell University Press, 2019), examines the role of religion in the lives of corporate professionals in India and the Arabian Gulf. He is also co-author of Scientists and Secularity around the Globe(Oxford University Press, 2019) which examines the role of religion in the lives of scientists in eight countries. He lives in Maryland with his wife Claire and their four children.