Profile
Koray Caliskan is Associate Professor of Strategic Design and Management at Parsons and Associate Editor of the Journal of Cultural Economy. He received his Ph.D. with distinction from NYU’s Politics Department, with which he won the Malcolm Kerr Social Science Award from MESA. His book Market Threads: How Cotton Farmers and Traders Create a Global Commodity came out from Princeton University Press and focused on global commodity markets and relations of economization. He is a co-founder of Mamame, a social innovation project bringing together the organizational form of cooperative and limited liability company in economizing under-represented women’s labor, which won the Entrepreneurship of the Year Award in 2017 from Microsoft Turkey. He directed, produced and wrote fiction and documentary films, including Esma, shown at Cannes Film Festival. His last research project on cryptocurrencies, their global communities and blockchains was selected to be a winner of the Scientific Breakthrough of the Year Award in Social Sciences and Humanities by the Falling Walls Foundation. His book, based on this research, Data Money: Cryptocurrencies and their Communities, Blockchains and Markets will come out in 2022 from Columbia University Press. Currently, on an ESRC collaborative grant, he is carrying out research on the economic sociology of digital advertisements.
Degrees Held
BA. 1995. Political Science, Bogazici University, Istanbul.
MA. 1999. Politics, NYU, New York.
Certificate. 2001. Commodity Options and Futures Trading, Rhodes College, Memphis.
Ph.D. 2005. Politics, NYU, New York
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
(Last 5 years only)
Books:
2011. Market Threads: How Farmers and Traders Create a Global Commodity, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Forthcoming in 2022 Data Money: Cryptocurrencies and their Markets, Communities and Blockchains, New York: Columbia University Press
Peer-Reviewed and Indexed Academic Articles:
Forthcoming in 2022. (with Michael Lounsbury) Entrepreneurialism as Discourse: Towards a Critical Research Agenda. Research in Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 72.
Forthcoming in 2022. The Rise and Fall of Electra: A Cryptocurrency Community in Perspective. Review of Social Economy.
2020. 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
2020. Polanyi, Callon, and Amazon: Institutionalist, ANT, and DRAN Approaches to Platform Economies. Sociologica: International Journal for Sociological Debate, Vol. 14, Iss. 3, pp. 195-204. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/11748
2020. Data Money: The Socio-Technical Infrastructure of Cryptocurrency Blockchains, Economy and Society, Vol. 49, No. 4, pp. 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2020.1774258
2019. A Timely Rapprochement between Design Scholarship and Economization Studies, City, Vol. 23, Iss 4-5, pp. 673-675. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2019.1682869
2019. (with Julia Kirkegaard) When Socialists Marketize: The Case of China’s Wind Power Market Sector, Journal of Cultural Economy, Vol 12, Iss 2, pp. 154-168. DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2018.1544581
2018. Towards a New Political Regime in Turkey: From Competitive towards Full Authoritarianism, New Perspectives on Turkey, Vol: 58, , Iss. 1, Spring, pp. 5-33. https://doi.org/10.1017/npt.2018.10
2016. Explaining the End of Military Tutelary Regime and the July 15 Coup Attempt in Turkey, Journal of Cultural Economy, 10:1, 97-111.
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/
Research Interests
Markets
Organizational Design
Platform Economies
Blockchains
Cryptocurrencies
Digital Advertisement
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. (720.000 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