Matthew Coetzee

Cohort

2021

Subfields

Cultural Sociology, Global/Transnational Sociology and International Migration, Social Movements, Theory

Profile

I am a cultural sociologist and PhD candidate in Sociology, with a minor in Screen Cultures, at the University of Notre Dame. I am a Harry Frank Guggenheim Emerging Scholar for the 2025–2026 academic year, a Wilsey Distinguished Graduate Fellow at Notre Dame’s Institute for Ethics and the Common Good, a Kellogg Institute Fellow for the Study of Democracy and Development, and a Sorin Fellow at the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. I am also a Yale Predoctoral Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology.

My research asks how moral solidarity evolves over time and how communities rebuild connection after injustice. My book project investigates how communities respond to rupture: whether they fracture, defend boundaries, or mobilize toward moral repair. I examine how meanings and interpretations shape collective action in moments of crisis, with particular attention to collective memory, symbolic narratives, moral frameworks, and digital media. Grounded in fieldwork in post-apartheid South Africa, this work brings a global, theory-driven perspective to questions of meaning, action, racial violence, civil repair, and social transformation.

In addition to crisis response, I study long-term institutional approaches to reconciliation and public memory. My article, “Recurating Robben Island: Cultural Objects, Digital Memory, and the Entropic Afterlives of National Heritage,” published in the American Journal of Cultural Sociology, analyzes how visitor-generated Instagram posts reframe Robben Island Museum’s official narrative and reveal how digital platforms mediate fragmented and contested memory in post-conflict societies.

This broader interest in meaning and moral transformation also informs my co-authored book project, Occulture: The New Face of American Spirituality, forthcoming with Oxford University Press. The book traces the resurgence of supernatural, spiritual, and occult belief in American culture. Across these projects, I explore how collective memory, moral frameworks, and cultural meaning shift over time, whether in the wake of social rupture or through deeper currents of cultural change.

I grew up in Durban, South Africa, where I developed an early interest in justice, reconciliation, and social transformation in the aftermath of apartheid. I pursued a double major in Sociology and African Studies at Yale University, graduating with distinction in both majors and receiving the R.F. Thompson Award for outstanding research in African Studies. I later earned a master’s degree in Public Policy and Management from SOAS University of London, where I developed a global and interdisciplinary lens on inequality, civic response, and the politics of meaning-making