Besnik Pula

Dr. Pula is a political economist and social theorist. He has researched and published on social movements, nationalism, empire, colonial urbanism, agrarian politics, communist industrialization, and the globalization of production in the postcommunist world. He has also written on critical realism, organizational analysis, comparative historical methods, and phenomenology and interpretive social science. His first book, Globalization Under and After Socialism: The Rise of Transnational Capital in Central and Eastern Europe (Stanford University Press, 2018), was based on archival research, reconstructed historical data and extensive fieldwork across five countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The book develops a novel interpretation that challenges dominant understandings of the nature of economic "transitions" in Central and Eastern Europe. His new book, Alfred Schutz, Phenomenology, and the Renewal of Interpretive Social Science (Routledge, 2024) critically reevaluates and recasts the contributions of phenomenology, and particularly the groundbreaking work of Austrian-American theorist Alfred Schutz to interpretive social science. Pula is currently investigating the implications of Schutzian phenomenology for the historical social sciences and critical social and political analysis and advancing applications of the Schutzian-based political economy of knowledge he has developed in his book. In particular, he is examining the contentious social distributions of expert and lay knowledge that have characterized the global rise and diffusion of computing technology.

Prior to his arrival at Virginia Tech, Dr. Pula was Postdoctoral Researcher at the Center for the Study of Social Organization at Princeton University, Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, and Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. He has held fellowships from the National Science Foundation, Fulbright-Hays Program, International Research and Exchanges Board, and the American Council for Learned Societies. Currently, Dr. Pula serves as Director of the International Studies Program and is also Associate Director for Academic Affairs at the Center for European and Transatlantic Studies (CEUTS). He is a faculty affiliate of the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA), Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical and Cultural Thought (ASPECT), and the Center for Future Work Places and Practices (CFWPP). Recently, Dr. Pula served as a consultant for the Government of the Republic of Kosovo in the creation of the country's sovereign wealth fund.