Abraham is a Ph.D. candidate in the UCSB Department of Religious Studies. He earned a B.A. with Honors in Communication Sciences from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), an M.A. in Sociology from El Colegio de México, and an M.A. in Religious Studies from UCSB. His research examines how religion and secularism (laicidad) are transformed as governance discourses in Mexico under the administrations of López Obrador and Claudia Sheinbaum. Abraham analyzes how collaborations between scholars and interfaith actors within Mexico’s emerging policy landscape on religion recalibrate power dynamics between religious groups and the state in a nation with a strong secular tradition. Through a multisited ethnography of bureaucrats who manage religious affairs, his work highlights the local and transnational forces shaping public understandings of religion and the secular in Latin America. He received the Fulbright García Robles Fellowship to pursue graduate studies in the United States, as well as several awards—including the Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant—to support his doctoral research. He is the president and co-founder of the Seminario de Intersecciones de lo Religioso (SEMIR), an interdisciplinary network of early-career scholars of religion in Latin America. In his free time, he enjoys playing guitar and creating music as part of the indie-folk band jawli.
Recent Publications
Hawley-Suárez, A., & Vilchis, D. E. (forthcoming). Encuesta Metropolitana de Intersecciones Religiosas 2025 [Survey report]. Seminario de Intersecciones Religiosas, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.
Hawley-Suárez, A. (forthcoming). Secular Shifts on the Ground: Bureaucracy, Scholarship, and Interfaith in the Protestantization of Mexican Secularism. In D. P. Petri (Ed.), Routledge Handbook on Religion and Politics in Latin America. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Hawley-Suárez, A. (2025). Todo en todas partes al mismo tiempo: los sin-religión mexicanos como sitio heurístico para clarificar debates sobre secularización y laicidad. Ciencias Sociales Y Religión, 27(00), e025005, 1–35. https://doi.org/10.20396/csr.v27i00.8678415
Hawley, A. (2025). Do Mexicans support a secular regime? Types of attitudes towards secularism policies in four religious groups. In J. Tyssens, N. De Nutte & S. Schröder (Eds.), The non-religious and the state. Seculars crafting their lives in different frameworks from the age of revolution to the current day (pp. 147–166). Berlin: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111337982-008
Blankholm, J.; Cragun, R.; Hawley, A. & Stephen, S. (2025). The Beliefs of Nonbelievers: Exclusive Empiricism and Mortal Finitude Among Atheists and Agnostics. Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review; srae003, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srae003
Hawley, A. (2023). ¿Los mexicanos quieren un Estado laico? Tipología de attitudes hacia las políticas del secularismo en cuatro grupos de autoadscripción religiosa. Acta Sociológica, (92), 149–181. https://doi.org/10.22201/fcpys.24484938e.2023.92.87736
Vilchis, D.; Paz, E. & Hawley, A. (2023). La secularización como clave analítica para comprender algunas discusiones sobre diversidad sexual. In M. Molina & R. Velvet (Eds.) El principio de laicidad como base para las discusiones sobre género y sexualidad (pp. 13–39). Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; IIJ.
Blancarte, R., & Hawley, A. (2022). Les Protestants Évangéliques Et La Laïcité au Mexique. In D. Koussens, G. Bucumi & B. Basdevant (Eds.), Le paradoxe évangélique. Sécularisation et laïcisation face aux protestantismes évangéliques (pp. 225–250). Université Laval. https://doi.org/10.1515/9782763757582-013
Hawley, A. (2022). Repensar y proteger la laicidad en la 4T: religiones y comunicación política en el gobierno de AMLO). In D. Lemus (Ed.), Comunicación Política en el Gobierno de AMLO. Mañaneras, disputas y actores en el espacio público en la 4T (pp. 83–97). Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.