Melissa Wilde has been awarded a $50,000 grant from the University Research Foundation to begin digitizing the Censuses of Religious Bodies

Melissa Wilde has been awarded a $50,000 grant from the University Research Foundation to begin digitizing the Censuses of Religious Bodies. The censuses were conducted by the United States government in 1906, 1916, 1926 and 1936. Although bits and pieces of the censuses have been used by scholars, these incredible sources of data have mostly been languishing in obscurity, because they are not accessible as a database that can be examined via modern statistical analysis. With detailed data on the racial, ethnic, and gender backgrounds and economic resources of every religious congregation in the country, Wilde will be able to examine religious inequality in a way that has never been possible before.