Greg Goalwin is Associate Professor of Sociology at Aurora University. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara and has previously taught at both UCSB and California State University, Channel Islands.

Trained as a sociologist and historian of global politics, Greg specializes in the study of identity formation in and around borderland regions, places in between and on the boundaries of national communities. Much of this research has focused on the Middle East and Europe, with particular emphasis on religious nationalism and migration flows in Turkey, Ireland, and Syria.

Current projects explore similar processes of identify formation in two different ways. The first examines the recent conversion into a mosque of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, analyzing the symbolic resonance of sacred and contested spaces in the formation of social and political identities across time. A second project examines Alt-Right and White Nationalist movements in the United States, tracing the intersection of such political ideologies with the realm of popular culture and analyzing how political groups seized upon cultural arenas to assert control over cultural and political capital.

Results from Greg’s research have been published or are forthcoming in venues such as The Sociological Quarterly, Social Science History, the Journal of Historical Sociology, Patterns of Prejudice, Nationality Papers, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, and the International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society.  

His first book Borders of Belief: Religious Nationalism and the Formation of Identity in Ireland and Turkey was released by Rutgers University Press in July 2022.