Matan Shapiro

Matan Shapiro is a Social Anthropologist and Researcher in the Department of Digital Humanities at King's College London. He holds a PhD from University College London (2013) and has held academic positions at institutions including the University of Haifa, Ben Gurion University, and Bergen University. His research focuses on the intersection of digital culture, surveillance, and ethnography, with a particular interest in decentralized systems, cryptocurrency, and the anthropology of ethics and morality.

Shapiro's work spans diverse topics such as kinship dynamics in Northeast Brazil, millenarian movements among Bitcoin communities, and the securitization of data in blockchain technologies. His current research investigates how blockchain-based systems form decentralized moral communities. He is affiliated with the Research Centre for Digital Culture at King’s College, which explores digital culture’s societal impacts.

Key research themes include play and ritual dynamics, paradox in social relations, and the anthropology of surveillance. His fieldwork includes studies in Israel, Brazil, and Norway, examining topics like crypto-egalitarianism, neo-Pentecostal political imaginaries, and the moral topology of exorcism rituals.

Shapiro has taught courses on digital cultures, Brazilian society, and security studies. His publications include works on cryptocurrency, ritual theory, and the sociopolitical dimensions of religious practices. He actively contributes to interdisciplinary debates on technology, morality, and globalization.