Katie Comeau
Postdoctoral Fellow
Postdoctoral Fellow
Katie Comeau, PhD, is a postdoctoral research associate in the Center for Social Concerns. She applies her expertise in well-being, religion, and organizations in her work with the McNeill Justice Fellows program where she provides mentorship and supervision for students and their research. Katie maintains several research projects connecting her interests in organizations and leadership. The first examines the strategies churches adopt to address climate change in their communities. The project assesses how factors such as geographic location, church size, and denomination affect the way a church helps its community navigate the effects of climate change. Katie uses data from the National Study of Religious Leaders to examine the factors that lead to clergy burnout in women clergy and clergy of color. Katie also uses data from her recent Caring for Clergy project to assess the gap in care for supporting clergy women and women of color and why the care gap still persists.
Prior to coming to the Center, Katie was at the Ormond Center in Duke Divinity School. There she examined the support network of North American clergy and co-authored the book Caring for Clergy: Understanding a Disconnected Network of Providers. She also collected data on how churches are addressing climate change in their communities, a project which she continues at the University of Notre Dame. Katie has taught a number of courses to undergraduate and graduate students including Social Problems, Social Theory, and Global Stratification.