David has been named the Director of Boston College's Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, effective the summer of 2026. He is currently the Paul Weber Endowed Chair in Politics, Science and Religion at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, where he also directs the university's Center for Asian Democracy. As an Associate Professor in the Political Science Department, he both teaches and conducts research on the impact of religion on democratic politics worldwide. He served as a 2016-17 Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow, posted to the State Department’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs. His most recent book, Blessing America First: Religion, Populism, and Foreign Policy in the Trump Administration (Columbia University Press 2024), draws on his firsthand experience working as a Council on Foreign Relations fellow in the State Department during the Obama-Trump transition. His first book, Faithful to Secularism: The Religious Politics of Democracy in Ireland, Senegal, and the Philippines (Columbia University Press 2017) won the 2018 International Studies Association's Book Award for Best Book in Religion and International Relations. David is a 2005 US-Ireland Alliance Scholar. He received a Master's Degree in Comparative Ethnic Conflict from Queen's University, Belfast. David returned to Ireland in 2011 to conduct case research for his PhD. Thanks to introductions from the US-Ireland Alliance, he was based at the Irish School of Ecumenics at Trinity College Dublin while researching the evolving relationship between religion and politics in an increasingly secular Ireland. David obtained his undergraduate degree at the University of Virginia.

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