J. Shawn Landres (PhD, Religious Studies, UC Santa Barbara; MSt with distinction, Social Anthropology, University of Oxford; BA cum laude, Columbia University) is a Senior Fellow at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. His research examines coordination, trust, and institutional accountability, particularly beyond formal structures. He is the author of Religious Studies from the Field: The Sightline to Scholarship (Routledge, forthcoming 2027) and has co-edited Personal Knowledge and Beyond: Reshaping the Ethnography of Religion (NYU Press, 2002), After The Passion Is Gone: American Religious Consequences (AltaMira, 2004), and Religion, Violence, Memory, and Place (Indiana University Press, 2006), and led the Connected to Give national research series on religion and household charitable giving.
Landres's scholarship draws on more than two decades of public and civic practice. He has served on the Los Angeles County Quality and Productivity Commission since 2013 (Chair, 2017–2019; now Chair Emeritus and Vice Chair of its Productivity Investment Board) and led the engagement working group for the County's ProsperLA economic recovery initiative, which received a National Association of Counties Achievement Award. In Santa Monica he served on and chaired the Planning Commission (2018-2026; chair 2020–21) and the Social Services Commission (chair 2015–18) and he was a two-term member of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Financial Oversight Committee. He is Vice Chair of the Board of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, where he also chairs the Strategic Planning Committee, and has served on the boards of the Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California, the Human Relations Council of the Santa Monica Bay Area, Keshet, and Jewish Mosaic (as chair). He also advises NEXUS and sits on the Public Policy Advisory Committee of Southern California Grantmakers. In academic service, he is a member of the editorial board of CrossCurrents and previously chaired the American Academy of Religion's Civic Engagement Task Force and served on its Applied Religious Studies Committee.
Shawn Landres is a Research Affiliate with the Capps Center. Shawn joined the Capps Center in 2026.