last updated: July 2025

Bridget Ritz is a Sociologist and research affiliate with the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame (IN, USA). Bridget received her PhD from the University of Notre Dame (2022), and her MA in the Social Sciences from the University of Chicago (2015). Her work bridges insights from the American philosophical tradition of pragmatism with critical realism, and applies these to questions in cultural sociology.

Selected Publications

Articles

In reverse chronological order

Ritz, B. (forthcoming). Dewey’s Peircean aesthetics: An exegesis and its upshot for sociology. Journal of Classical Sociology.

Ritz, B. (2023). Social mechanisms: Bridging critical realist and pragmatist approaches. Journal of Critical Realism, 22(3), 404–410.

Ritz, B. (2023). Continuities between Peircean realism and critical realism: On causation, ontology, and truth. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 53(4), 434–453.

Ritz, B. (2022). Peircean realism: A primer. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 52(3), 515–527.

Ritz, B. (2020). Comparing abduction and retroduction in Peircean pragmatism and critical realism. Journal of Critical Realism, 19(5), 456–465.

Popular article

Ritz, B., & Vaidyanathan, B. (2025). Aha = Wow. Aeon. https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-search-for-beauty-drives-scientific-enquiry