Patrick Mason is a professor of religious studies and history at Utah State University, where he holds the Leonard J. Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Notre Dame, where his dissertation studied the history of violence against religious minorities in the late 19th-century southern United States. Mason is the author or editor of several books and is frequently consulted by the media on stories related to Mormonism and American religion more broadly.