Rev. Stephen M. Koeth, C.S.C. is an urban, religious, and political historian of twentieth-century America. His research focuses on U.S. Catholic involvement in postwar metropolitan development, including urban renewal projects, public housing, and suburbanization, and the effects of these interactions on Catholic faith and politics.

He is an assistant professor of history and faculty co-director of the Church Properties Initiative. Fr. Koeth’s research has been supported by grants from the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, The Catholic University of America, The American Catholic Historical Association, and The Sacred Heart Institute of the Archdiocese of New York and the Dioceses of Brooklyn and Rockville Centre. His scholarship has been published in the Journal of Church and State, U.S. Catholic Historian, and American Catholic Studies and his commentary has appeared in The Washington Post, The Washington Times, and on BBC Radio 4's Sunday. Fr. Koeth serves as priest-in-residence in Stanford Hall.

His newest book, Crabgrass Catholicism: How Suburbanization Transformed Faith and Politics in Postwar America (2025) explores the effects of postwar suburbanization on American Catholic parish life and politics.

Fr. Koeth earned both a B.A. in History (1999) and an M.Div. (2006) from the University of Notre Dame and was ordained a Holy Cross priest in 2007. He completed an M.A. in History at The Catholic University of America in 2012, and in 2020 was awarded a Ph.D. in History from Columbia University.