Nina Bandelj is an economic sociologist interested in the study of money, and how culture, power and emotions influence investment, spending, debt, inequality, and ideas about economy. Growing up in Yugoslavia and coming of age as Eastern Europe transformed rapidly after the fall of the Berlin Wall inspires Bandelj to connect individuals’ emotions, beliefs and struggles with systemic transformations of communism, capitalism and the global economy.

Bandelj received her Ph.D. from Princeton University and is currently Chancellor’s Professor in the Department of Sociology and Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Development at the University of California, Irvine. She is an elected member of the Sociological Research Association and a recipient of the Dynamic Womxn Academic Achievement Award, the Senate Distinguished Mid-Career Service Award and the Carol Connor Equity Advisor Impact Award from the University of California, Irvine. She received fellowships from the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, the European University Institute in Florence, and the Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. Bandelj is past Treasurer of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, past Chair of the Economic Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association, past co-Chair of the Social Transformation and Sociology of Development Research Committee of the International Sociological Association  and former longtime and first woman editor of Socio-Economic Review. In 2021-22 she was Vice President of the American Sociological Association. She is currently President of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics.