Section: Staff Profiles

Alexandru Preda

Name
Dr Alexandru Preda
Title
Organisation
Sociology, School of Social and Political Science
University of Edinburgh
Address
5.06 Chrystal Macmillan Building 15a George Square Edinburgh UK EH8 9LD
Telephone
+44 (0)131 650 4052
E-Mail
URL
http://www.sociology.ed.ac.uk/staff_profiles/preda_alexandru
Photo: Alexandru Preda

Qualifications

  • BA (Philosophy, Bucharest),
  • Dr. rer. soc. (Sociology, Bielefeld),
  • Habil. (Sociology, Konstanz)

Office hours

Mondays, 1-3pm

 

Research interests

  • Decision-making and cognitive processes in online anonymous markets
  • The interaction order of anonymous electronic transactions
  • The public understanding of finance
  • Forms of charisma in economic life

ESRC-funded research project: Technology, Action and Cognition in Online Anonymous Markets: A Sociological Study of Non-institutional Traders (RES 062-23-1204)

Recent technological advances have widened access to real time financial transactions beyond the organizational settings of trading floors in established financial institutions. Trading can be now conducted from the kitchen or from a high street cafe: this has opened the possibility for many laypeople to engage in financial trading.  With that, financial actors have apparently come closer to the model of  dispersed, calculating individuals making choices based on their strategies. But what does it specifically mean to make decisions and develop strategies in online anonymous markets? Based on the collection and analysis of naturally occurring data, the project investigates the cognitive processes which embed decision-making and planning in online financial markets.

 

PhD Supervision

  • Studies of interaction orders
  • Economic sociology
  • Sociology of knowledge and science
  • Sociology of technology

 

Selected Publications

Books

Framing Finance: The Boundaries of Markets and Modern Capitalism, University of Chicago Press, forthcoming July 2009

Link to publisher: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=toc&bookkey=398921 

Information, Knowledge, and Economic Life: An Introduction to the Sociology of Markets, Oxford University Press, forthcoming November 2009

Link to publisher: http://www.oup.com/uk/catalogue/?ci=9780199556953

AIDS, Rhetoric, and Medical Knowledge (Cambridge University Press, 2004)

The Sociology of Financial Markets (co-edited with Karin Knorr Cetina, Oxford University Press, 2004)

 

Recent articles

'Brief Encounters: Calculation and the Interaction Order of Anonymous Electronic Markets', Accounting, Organizations and Society, forthcoming (link to preprint: doi:10.1016/j.aos.2008.06.005).

'The Temporalization of Financial Markets: From Network to Flow' (with Karin Knorr Cetina), Theory, Culture & Society 2007, 24/7-8: 116-138.

'The Sociological Approach to Financial Markets', Journal of Economic Issues 2007, 21/3: 506-533.

'Socio-technical Agency in Financial Markets: The Case of the Stock Ticker', Social Studies of Science 2006, 36/5: 753-782.

 

This page was published on 24 March 2009


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