Daromir Rudnyckyj is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Victoria, where he serves as Director of the Counter Currency Laboratory and Principal Investigator for the Futures of Money project. He is also the President of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion (2021-2023). His research addresses globalization, money, religion, development, capitalism, finance, and the state. He conducts field and archival work in Southeast Asia, North America, and Europe. His current research examines the techno-politics of money, with a focus on experiments in producing monetary forms and public debates over currency reform.
Xue Ma is a PhD student in the anthropology department at the University of Victoria, and a Research Assistant at the Counter Currency Lab. She holds an MA in Anthropology (2020) from Illinois State University and MS in Finance (2017) from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Xue’s research interests are centered on the politics of money and finance, particularly how the competing economic imaginaries of how money works shape and get shaped by social relations. Her dissertation project investigates the dynamics among state, market and society in the emergence of digital monies in China.
Brayden Blacklock is an MA student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Victoria under the supervision of Dr. Rudnyckyj. He is undertaking work with the Comox Valley LETS system to explore the ways in which systems of reciprocity may be hybridized with liberal principles and the implications of this on understandings of money.
Roberto Alberto is an MA student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Victoria under the supervision of Dr. Rudnyckyj. Roberto’s research interests are focused primarily on providing evidence of a similar neoliberal and economic rationale as described by Michel Foucault on the esports industry and its players. In addition, he has spent time researching virtual money and currencies in video games focusing on how virtual items are valued and exchanged.
