Nina Bandelj

Nina Bandelj serves as a Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine, where she is an active affiliate of the Center for Organizational Research (COR). Her research bridges economic sociology and family studies, examining how money, debt, and market logics permeate intimate social relations. She frequently participates in COR initiatives like the Academic Speed-Dating events held in Social Sciences Plaza B, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration among scholars.

Bandelj's research centers on three interconnected domains: (1) the economization of family life, analyzing how parenting transforms into human capital investment through debt-financed childcare and education; (2) cross-national inequality, investigating ethnic marginalization in Eastern Europe and gender pay gaps within workplaces; and (3) money's social meaning, exploring emotional economies of modern parenting and the valuation of 'priceless' social domains. Her work consistently challenges the 'hostile worlds' thesis by demonstrating how economic and intimate spheres co-constitute each other.

Recent publications reveal intensifying focus on debt-driven middle-class parenting (e.g., mortgage debt tied to childrearing) and commodified childhood (e.g., pricing early education), while maintaining strong comparative analysis of postsocialist economies. This trajectory reflects broader shifts in economic sociology toward studying financialization's penetration into familial spheres.

Bandelj actively cultivates scholarly communities through COR events and writing initiatives like 'U See I Write,' emphasizing collaborative knowledge production. Her work demonstrates how micro-level family economies scaffold macro-level policy failures, particularly regarding America's family-hostile welfare state.