Nina Bandelj is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. She completed her international baccalaureate in Ljubljana, Slovenia, her B.A. (summa cum laude) at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Sociology at Princeton University. Her doctoral dissertation was awarded the Martin Seymour Lipset Award from the Society for Comparative Research.

Bandelj began her career as Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine in 2003, and was promoted to Full Professor in 2014. She served as Acting Associate Dean for Graduate Affairs and Research in the School of Social Sciences, as Equity Advisor to Dean of Social Sciences, and currently serves as Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Development and as Co-Director of the Center for Organizational Research at UCI. She is a facilitator in the Women’s Development Initiative supported by the UC Office of the President. Professor Bandelj’s research examines the social, cultural and emotional influences on economy, determinants and consequences of globalization, and social change in postsocialist Europe. Her articles have been published in top discipline and specialty journals such as the American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Theory and Society, and Socio-Economic Review. Her books include From Communists to Foreign Capitalists: The Social Foundations of Foreign Direct Investment in Postsocialist Europe (2008), Economy and State: A Sociological Perspective (2010, with E. Sowers), Economic Sociology of Work (2009), The Cultural Wealth of Nations (2011, with F. Wherry), Socialism Vanquished, Socialism Challenged: Eastern Europe and China, 1989-2009 (2012, with D. Solinger) and Money Talks: Explaining How Money Really Works (2017, with F. Wherry and V. Zelizer). Bandelj’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, the University of California, and the Slovenian Research Agency. She was awarded fellowships from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany, and the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. Professor Bandelj is an elected member of the Sociological Research Association honorary society, and a recipient of the UCI Senate Award for Distinguished Mid-Career Service and Dynamic Womxn of UCI Academic Achievement Award. She is one of the editors of Socio-Economic Review, Treasurer of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, past Chair of the Economic Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association (ASA), past Co-Chair of the RC09 of the International Sociological Association, and a current Council-at-large member of the ASA, and on the Council of the Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section of the ASA.