John Christopher Torpey (born August 22, 1959) is an American academic, sociologist, and historian best known for his scholarship on the state, identity, and contemporary politics.

[5] Torpey received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Amherst College in 1981 in political science, before completing his Ph.D. in sociology at University of California, Berkeley in 1992.

[2] At Berkeley, Torpey wrote his dissertation under the guidance of Jerome Karabel, Robert Bellah, and Martin Jay, which later became the foundation of his first book Intellectuals, Socialism, and Dissent: The East German Opposition and its Legacy.

In 2010, Torpey was the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Studies at the Karl-Franzens-University in Graz, Austria.

Alongside Christian Joppke, Torpey has written on the legal and cultural integration of Islam into Western liberal democracies, comparing the United States, Germany, France, and Canada.