Nina Bandelj

Nina Bandelj is an economic sociologist, author and academic. She is a Chancellor's Professor in the Department of Sociology, Associate Vice Provost for faculty development, and co-director of the Center for Organizational Research at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). She is also a visiting professor at the IEDC-Bled School of Management and a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University.

Bandelj is most known for her work in economic sociology where she has examined the impacts of culture, politics, and emotions in shaping economic processes with a focus on postsocialist changes, globalization and financialization. She is the author and editor of several books including From Communists to Foreign Capitalists: The Social Foundations of Foreign Investment in Postsocialist Europe, Socialism Vanquished, Socialism Challenged: Eastern Europe and China and Money Talks: Explaining How Money Really Works.

Bandelj is an elected member of the Sociological Research Association. She was a vice-president of the American Sociological Association and President-Elect of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. She served as an editor of Socio-Economic Review and holds editorial appointments at journals including the International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology, Druzboslovne Razprave and the American Journal of Cultural Sociology.

Education Bandelj completed an International Baccalaureate program in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In 1993, she enrolled at Augsburg College in Minneapolis and earned her B.A. in sociology and communication. She then pursued further education at Princeton University, where she obtained her master's degree and PhD in sociology. Her dissertation titled Embedded Economies: Foreign Direct Investment in Central and Eastern Europe was awarded the Seymour Martin Lipset Prize from Society for Comparative Research. She is currently serving as a visiting professor at IEDC Bled School of Management and as a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University

Bandelj holds concurrent appointments as inaugural Associate Vice-Provost for Faculty Development, and co-director of the Center for Organizational Research, at the University of California, Irvine.

Research Bandelj's research primarily focuses on two areas of inquiry: economic sociology and social change, with a specific emphasis on the transformations that have occurred in Central and Eastern Europe in the context of globalization.

Economic sociology Bandelj has discussed the various aspects of economic sociology and its possible contributions. In her book From Communists to Foreign Capitalists: The Social Foundations of Foreign Investment in Postsocialist Europe, which Doug Guthrie for Administrative Science Quarterly called "an outstanding piece of work on the postsocialist transformation", she identified that politics, states, and path dependency play a crucial role in how markets are created and how they operate. She also found that the extent of legitimacy given by host nations to foreign direct investment (FDI) had a greater influence on the amount of foreign capital entering post-socialist countries during the initial phase of market reform, as opposed to formal regulations. In a related study, she highlighted that foreign globalization may be framed both in favor as well as against national interests, with multiple and contradictory views due to uncertain economic consequences shaped by social identities and postsocialist macro conditions. In her book, The Cultural Wealth of Nations, she examined how symbolic and cultural resources of countries, or cultural wealth, affect economic development.

Emotion and economy Bandelj has worked on understanding the influence of emotions on economic actions or interactions, or ‘emotional embeddedness,’ and identified improvisation and situational adaptation as two such behaviors, where improvisation involves the emergence of goals and means through emotional interactions, and situational adaptation occurs when actors modify their goals or methods in response to emotional changes resulting from interactions with others. She has published several analytical reviews of research on emotions and economy where she overviewed statements of classical sociologists and political economists, the concept of ‘emotion work’ and the role of emotions in economic action and interaction.

Money talks Bandelj has conducted research on the fundamentals of money, including its origin, uses, effects and future and its impact on society at a broader level. In her book Money Talks: Explaining How Money Really Works, she has discussed an analysis of the complex and multifaceted role that money plays in people's lives and society as a whole. In a review for the American Journal of Sociology, Cheris Shun-ching Chan commended this book for its capacity to integrate diverse voices into a unified and meaningful collection, describing it as a remarkable achievement, and also added that, "I applaud the three editors for weaving the chapters into meaningful themes...". She has written on relational work in the economy and how economic actors match different monies with social relations and economic transactions, extending the work of sociologist Viviana Zelizer. She has also written on the new social value of children, or the emergence of the human capital child.