David Voas

David Voas is Emeritus Professor of Social Science at University College London (UCL). He was head of the UCL Social Research Institute from 2016 to 2020. His research is mainly concerned with religious change in modern societies, based on quantitative analysis of large survey datasets.

David studied at London School of Economics and the University of Cambridge:

- LSE: BSc(Econ), First Class Honours (Philosophy, Logic & Scientific Method), 1977

- LSE: MSc with Distinction (Demography), 1978

- Cambridge: PhD (Social & Political Sciences; ‘Demographic and historical aspects of subfertility in tropical Africa’), 1981

He worked in the private sector for a number of years and also spent extended periods outside the UK, particularly in France, the United States and Bulgaria. He returned to academic life in 1998, first as a researcher at the University of Liverpool and subsequently as a lecturer at the University of Sheffield.

In 2003 David was awarded a Simon Research Fellowship at the University of Manchester, where he remained for eight years (being promoted to professor in 2007). Having started in the Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research, he become one of the founding members of the Institute for Social Change; the two centres later merged to become the Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research.

David was Professor of Population Studies in the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex from 2011 to 2016. He joined UCL as Professor of Social Science and Head of the Department of Social Science (now the UCL Social Research Institute) in February 2016. He was formerly an associate member of Nuffield College, Oxford.

David was been awarded two dozen research grants over a period of two decades, usually as principal investigator. He had senior roles in the European Values Study through 2020.

He has been on the councils of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the International Society for the Sociology of Religion and chaired the Finance Committee of the Association for the Sociology of Religion. He serves on the editorial boards of the British Journal of Sociology and the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. He is co-director of British Religion in Numbers (www.brin.ac.uk), a web resource that has been accorded the status of Academy Research Project by the British Academy.

Selected publications:

Voas, D. (2025) Invisible secularity: American theism beyond belief. Social Forces 104(1): 366-85.

Voas, D. (2023) Sex, value change and the erosion of religious adherence. Religion, Brain & Behavior.

Voas, D. & Storm, I. (2021) National context, parental socialization, and the varying relationship between religious belief and practice. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 60(1): 189-97.

Olson, DVA, Jung, JH, Marshall, J & Voas, D. (2020) Sacred canopies or religious markets? The effect of county-level religious diversity on later changes in religious involvement. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 59(2): 227-46. [Received the 2021 Best Article award from the International Society for the Sociology of Religion]

Voas, D. (2020) Is the secularization research programme progressing? Social Compass 67(2): 323-9. 

Voas, D. & Chaves, M. (2016) Is the United States a counterexample to the secularization thesis? American Journal of Sociology 121(5): 1517-56. [Received the 2017 Distinguished Article award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion]

Voas, D. (2015) Sociology of religion, International Encyclopedia of Social & Behavioral Sciences 2nd Edition, Elsevier.

Voas, D. (2014) Towards a sociology of attitudes. Sociological Research Online 19(1).

Voas, D., McAndrew, S. & Storm, I. (2013) Modernization and the gender gap in religiosity: Evidence from cross-national European surveys. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 65: 259-83. [Received the 2015 Best Article award from the International Society for the Sociology of Religion]

Voas, D. & Fleischmann, F. (2012) Islam moves west: Religious change in the first and second generations. Annual Review of Sociology 38: 525-45.

Voas, D. & McAndrew, S. (2012) Three puzzles of non-religion in Britain. Journal of Contemporary Religion 27(1): 29-48.

Voas, D. & Doebler, S. (2011) Secularization in Europe: Religious change between and within birth cohorts. Journal of Religion and Society in Central and Eastern Europe 4(1): 39-62. 

Ward, C. & Voas, D. (2011) The emergence of conspirituality. Journal of Contemporary Religion 26(1): 103-21.

Voas, D. (2009) The rise and fall of fuzzy fidelity in Europe. European Sociological Review 25(2): 155-68. [Received the 2010 Distinguished Article award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion]

Voas, D. (2007) Surveys of behaviour, beliefs and affiliation, in The SAGE Handbook of the Sociology of Religion, ed. J Beckford and NJ Demerath. Sage, pp. 128-150.

Voas, D. (2007) The continuing secular transition, in The Role of Religion in Modern Societies, ed. D Pollack and DVA Olson. Routledge, pp. 25-48.

Crockett, A. & Voas, D. (2006) Generations of decline: Religious change in twentieth-century Britain. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 45(4): 567-84.

Voas, D. & Crockett, A. (2005) Religion in Britain: Neither believing nor belonging. Sociology 39(1): 11-28.

Voas, D. (2003) Competing preferences: A reason fertility tends to be too high or too low. Population and Development Review 29(4): 627-46.

Voas, D. (2003) Intermarriage and the demography of secularisation. British Journal of Sociology 54(1): 83-108.

Voas, D., Olson, DVA & Crockett, A. (2002) Religious pluralism and participation: Why previous research is wrong. American Sociological Review 67(2): 212-30.