Robert Orsi is Grace Craddock Nagle Chair of Catholic Studies at Northwestern University, where he is also Professor of Religious Studies, History, and American Studies. Orsi studies modern and contemporary religion, with a special focus on Catholic practices and ideas, from both historical and ethnographic perspectives. He also researches and writes on theory and method in the study of religion. 

His books include The Madonna of 115^th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1959 (3^rd ed., 2010); Thank You, Saint Jude: Women’s Devotion to the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes (1996); Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them (2005); the edited volume, Gods of the City: Religion and the American Urban Landscape (1999); and History and Presence (2016).