Profile
Koray Caliskan is an economic sociologist and organizational designer. He is a tenured professor at the School of Design Strategies at Parsons, The New School, where he teaches in the Strategic Design and Management graduate program. He serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Design Strategies and as Associate Editor of the Journal of Cultural Economy. He designed the strategy for MaMame, a social innovation initiative supporting underrepresented women’s labor, which received Microsoft’s Entrepreneurship of the Year Award in 2017. He has directed and produced several award-winning fiction and documentary films, including Esma, which was screened at the Cannes Film Festival. He is a co-founder of The Wrong Department, a strategic design studio with offices in London and New York City. In 2021, he founded the Good Interventions Economic and Strategic Design International Competition and has since served as curator of annual exhibitions showcasing winning projects. His research on cryptocurrencies received the Scientific Breakthrough of the Year Award in Social Sciences from the Falling Walls Foundation in 2021 and was featured in the Financial Times for offering new insights into the US economy. Concepts developed in this research informed the identification of a new cryptocurrency tax event by the Internal Revenue Service, known as stacked taxation of bartered financial assets. His work examines how markets, platforms, and economies are made, governed, and redesigned, with a particular focus on digital advertising and artificial intelligence. He is the author of Market Threads: How Farmers and Traders Create a Global Commodity (Princeton University Press) and Data Money: Inside Cryptocurrencies and Their Markets, Communities, and Blockchains (Columbia University Press). He is also co-author of Inside Digital Advertising: Platforms, Power, and Material Politics (Polity, with Donald MacKenzie) and Economization: Markets, Platforms, and Ecologies (Columbia University Press, forthcoming with Michel Callon and Donald MacKenzie). His current research focuses on AI integration in digital economies, examining how agentic systems, platform infrastructures, and strategic design are reshaping value creation, production, and exchange. He teaches New Economies and Societies, Strategy Design Studio, and Autonomous Agent and Platform Design.
Degrees Held
Ph.D. 2005. Politics, NYU, New York
MA. 1999. Politics, NYU, New York.
Certificate. 2001. Commodity Options and Futures Trading, Rhodes College, Memphis.
BA. 1995. Political Science, Bogazici University, Istanbul.
Professional Affiliation
American Sociological Association, ASA
Design Research Society
Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, SASE
Association for Social Economics, ASE
Middle Eastern Studies Association, MESA
American Anthropological Association, AAA
European Group for Organization Studies, EGOS
Recent Publications
Books:
Inside Digital Advertising: Platforms, Power, and Material Politics. London: Polity Press, (with Donald MacKenzie), 2025.
Economization: Markets, Platforms, and Ecologies, Columbia UP, (with Michel Callon and Donald MacKenzie), forthcoming in 2026.
Data Money: Inside Cryptocurrencies and their Markets, Communities and Blockchains, Columbia University Press, 2023.
Market Threads: How Farmers and Traders Create a Global Commodity, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.
(Under review) From Billboards to Bids: Online Advertising and the Rise of Superplatform Economies, MIT Press, (with Donald MacKenzie).
Peer-Reviewed and Indexed Academic Articles:
Forthcoming. (with Donald MacKenzie and Addie McGowan). Superplatform: A Framework to Analyze and Regulate Google’s Online Ad Ecosystem Internet Policy Review.
2025. (with Alexandre Mallard). Michel Callon (1945–2025): A life with passion for economies. Journal of Cultural Economy, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2025.2595423
2025. The Modes and Types of Performativity: A Meta-Theoretical Review (with Sevde N. Unal, Simone Polillo, and Donald MacKenzie). Finance and Society. 11(3):319-342. doi:10.1017/fas.2025.11.
2025. Ecologization, part 1: Towards assets-actifs and care practices. (with Michel Callon and Donald MacKenzie). Economy and Society, Vol 54(2), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2025.2488121
2025. Ecologization, part 2: Practices, Strategies and Devices for Managing Asset-Actifs. (with Michel Callon and Donald MacKenzie). Economy and Society, Vol 54(3), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2025.2498825
2025. Prodexchange: Digital-Industrial Economization in Google Search Supply Chain, (with Donald MacKenzie and Addie McGowan) Platforms and Society, Volume 2: 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1177/29768624251337868
2024. Stacked economization: a research program for the study of platforms. (with Michel Callon and Donald MacKenzie). Journal of Cultural Economy, 18(2), 304–331. https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2024.2423687
2024. Review Symposium: Michel Callon's Markets in the Making: Rethinking Competition, Goods, and Innovation. (with Michel Callon, Paul Langley, Bill Maurer, Timothy Mitchell, Alvin Roth). Journal of Cultural Economy, 18(1), 154–167. https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2024.2413105.
2024. Intermediaries, Mediators and Digital Advertising’s Tensions. (with Addie McGowan and Donald MacKenzie) Journal of Cultural Economy, 17(5), 513–531. https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2024.2360919
2023. Strange Bedfellows: Consumer protection and competition policy in the making of the EU privacy Regime. (with Charlotte Rommerskirchen and Donald MacKenzie). Journal of Common Market Studies. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13552
2023. Header Bidding: ‘Systems’, ‘Gatherings’ and the Material Politics of Market Structure in Online Advertising. (with Donald MacKenzie and Charlotte Rommerskirchen), Economy and Society. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2023.2238463
2022. DARN Part 1: What is Strategic Design? Social Theory and Intangible Design in Perspective. (with Matt Wade) She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation. Vol. 8, Iss. 3, Autumn 2022, pp. 299-318. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2022.10.001
2022. DARN Part 2: An Evidence-Based Research and Prototyping Methodology for Strategic Design. (with Matt Wade), She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, Vol. 8, Iss. 3, Autumn 2022, pp. 319-335. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2022.11.002
2022. Introducing the Lens of Markets-in-the-Making to Transition Studies: The Case of the Danish Wind Power Market Agencement. (with Peter Karnoe and Julia Kirkegaard). Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, Vol. 44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2022.05.003
2022. Entrepreneurialism as Discourse: Towards a Critical Research Agenda, Research in Sociology of Organizations, (with Michael Lounsbury) Vol. 72. Volume 81, pp. 43–53. doi:10.1108/S0733-558X20220000081003
2022. The Elephant in the Dark: A New Framework for Cryptocurrency Taxation and Exchange Platform Regulation in the US. Journal of Risk Financial Management. Vol. 15, Iss. 3, pp. 1-18, https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm15030118.
2022. The Rise and Fall of Electra: A Cryptocurrency Community in Perspective, Review of Social Economy, Vol 79, Iss. 4, 1-25, https://doi.org/10.1080/00346764.2022.2039404
2021. Data Money Makers: An Ethnographic Analysis of a Global Cryptocurrency Community, The British Journal of Sociology, Vol 73, 168-187. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12916
2021. Platform Works as Stack Economization: Cryptocurrency Markets and Exchanges in Perspective, Sociologica: International Journal for Sociological Debate, Vol. 14, Iss. 3, pp. 115-42. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/11746
Curation
2025 Good Interventions: An Economic and Strategic Design Exhibition’25 Parsons School of Design, The New School.
2024. Good Interventions: An Economic and Strategic Design Exhibition’24, Parsons School of Design, The New School.
2023. Good Interventions: An Economic and Strategic Design Exhibition'23, Parsons School of Design, The New School.
2022. Good Interventions: An Economic and Strategic Design Exhibition'22, Parsons School of Design, The New School.
Data Sets
2021 (with Enis Simsar) Twitter Interaction Data of Electra Cryptocurrency Community's Twitter Handle Followers and A Code for Follower Interaction Analysis. GitHub Repository https://github.com/enisimsar/DataMoney https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4618865
2020 (with Ilker Birbil). Terms of Service Agreements of 251 Cryptocurrency Exchanges Representing 99.99% of Centralized Data Money Transactions. GitHub Repository https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4126569
2020 (with Ilker Birbil). The White Papers of Most Valuable 100 Cryptocurrencies. GitHub Repository https://github.com/sibirbil/DataMoney https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4126559
Performances and Appearances
How to make and destroy a cryptocurrency?
http://sds.parsons.edu/designmanagement/6616-2/
Economies are Designed, so they be redesigned:
https://platform.coop/stories/koray-caliskan-the-new-school-bogazici-university/
Coindesk TV Interview on 'Witnessing a New Money Material.'
https://www.coindesk.com/video/author-on-crypto-we-are-witnessing-a-new-money-material/
Research Interests
AI, Autonomous Agents, Platforms
Online Advertisement
Design as Social Science Method
Markets and Platforms
Organizational Design
Awards And Honors
2021 Winner. Scientific Breakthroughs of the Year Award in Social Sciences and Humanities. The Falling Walls Foundation
2021 Social and Economic Research Council Grant, UK. (641.000 USD with two team members).
2018 Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies Fellowship, NSSR.
2018 Short listed for the Georg-Forster Award, Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung
2018 Chancellor's Fellowship. University of Edinburgh, (Declined)
2017 The Entrepreneurship of the Year Award, for mamame.com.tr Microsoft Corp, Kagider, Turkey.
2015 Academic Achievement Award, Bogazici University, Rector’s Office
2006 Outstanding Teaching Award, Bogazici University, Rector’s Office
2005 Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award in Social Sciences, Middle East Studies Association of North America
2005 New York University, Graduation with Distinction Certificate.
Portfolio
Esma, Short Film, 18:00, Director, Writer
In Flames, Feature Film, 100:00, Producer, Co-Writer
Last Villagers of Avshar, 45:00, Documentary, Director
Pipelines Made up of Donkeys, 45:00 Documentary, Producer, Al Jazeera
Republic of Wonderland: Turkish TV Series in the World, Documentary, 240:00 (4 Parts), Producer