Besnik Pula

Besnik Pula (PhD, University of Michigan) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Virginia Tech.   Pula teaches courses in international and comparative political economy, global economic governance, post-communist society and politics, and the methods of interpretive social science. He is the author of the book Globalization Under and After Socialism: The Evolution of Transnational Capital in Central and Eastern Europe published in 2018 by Stanford University Press. His other research has appeared in the Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society,  Political Power and Social Theory, Comparative Studies in History and Society, Theory and Society, Nationalities Papers, East European Politics, and as various book chapters. He is currently working on a project that examines bottom-up global histories of the computer revolution and its intersection with global Cold War politics and technology competition.

Dr. Pula is a recipient of fellowships and grants from the National Science Foundation, Fulbright-Hays program, International Research and Exchanges Board, American Council for Learned Societies, National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, and the International Institute at the University of Michigan. Prior to his appointment at Virginia Tech, Dr. Pula was a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for the Study of Social Organization and the Department of Sociology at Princeton University.

Alongside his ongoing research projects in the contemporary and historical political economy of Central and Eastern Europe, Dr. Pula has recently completed a project on the transnational flow of ideas, the politics of knowledge, and the making of modern interpretive social science, centered on the groundbreaking but largely overlooked work of Austrian-American phenomenologist Alfred Schutz. Dr. Pula also serves as founding member and Deputy Director of the Center for European Union, Transatlantic, and Trans-European Space Studies (CEUTTSS) at Virginia Tech. In 2021, Dr. Pula was appointed External Advisor for International Economic Relations to the Prime Minister of Kosovo and chaired the expert working group for the establishment of a sovereign investment fund of Kosovo.

Web: www.besnikpula.com
Blog: indications.substack.com