Dominik Balažka
I have a PhD in Social Sciences awarded by KU Leuven (Belgium), and a joint PhD in Sociology and Methodology of Social Research awarded by the University of Milan (Italy) and the University of Turin (Italy).
My primary research interests include non-religion studies, sociology of religion, cultural sociology, data ethics, Natural Language Processing, survey methods, Artificial Intelligence and Big Data. My PhD project employed a text mining approach to analyze the public discourse of militant non-religious organizations in the United States and the United Kingdom between 1881 and 2019. The study aimed to investigate the impact of secularization on the historical evolution of organized non-religious language.
I'm currently a member of the spsTREND laboratory, of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR), of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion (ISSR), and of the International Society for Historians of Atheism, Secularism, and Humanism (ISHASH). I previously worked as a researcher at Bruno Kessler Foundation with a double affiliation to the Center for Information and Communication Technology and to the Center for Religious Studies. Formerly, I worked on the European Values Study 2017 at Tilburg University and collaborated with the Department of Sociology and Social Research and with the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science of the University of Trento.
Articles:
• Balazka, D. (2025). Religious Nones. Forthcoming in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion. DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.1213
• Balazka, D., Houtman, D., & Lepri, B. (2021). How Can Big Data Shape the Field of Non-Religion Studies? And Why Does It Matter? Patterns 2(6): 1-12. DOI: 10.1016/j.patter.2021.100263
• Balazka, D., & Rodighiero, D. (2020). Big Data and the Little Big Bang: An Epistemological (R)evolution. Frontiers in Big Data 3, 31: 1-13. DOI: 10.3389/fdata.2020.00031
Book chapters, monographs, and dissertations:
• Fattorini, E., & Balazka, D. (2025). Is Religion Bad for You? Vaccine Hesitancy and Religiosity in the Pandemic Context. In Giansoldati, M. (ed.), Pandemia e vaccinazioni: Aspetti economici, sociali e politici. Edizioni Università di Trieste.
• Balazka, D. (2025). Non-Religious Discourses and the Secularization of the Secular: A Computational Study of Organized Non-Religion in the United States and the United Kingdom (1881-2019). [Doctoral dissertation, University of Milan/University of Turin/KU Leuven]. AIR/IRIS.
Code and data visualizations:
• Balazka, D. (2024). Semantic Network of Organized Non-Religious Discourses. Zenodo. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.13737530
• Balazka, D., & Rodighiero, D. (2021). Cartography of Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network. Zenodo. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4495456
