John Brewer is a graduate of the University of  Chicago (B.A. 1958, Ph.D. 1968), where he was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. He came to Trinity in 1972 as Chair of the newly established Sociology Department and retired in 2000. Prior to Trinity, he taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, York University in Toronto, and Wesleyan University in Middletown.

His teaching, writing and research interests have included the study of formal organizations, social interaction and small groups, the sociology of work, occupations and professions, the building and testing of sociological theories, and the analysis of social research strategies. He has held elective office in the University of Chicago's Society for Social Research and the American  Sociological Association. He has published in both The American Sociological Review and the American Journal of Sociology. His most recent publications include the book Foundations of Multimethod Research (Sage Publications, 2005) and two chapters in the recent Oxford Handbook of Multimethod and Mixed Methods Research Inquiry (Oxford University Press, 2015). He is presently studying literary approaches to investigating social life.