Bill Maurer outside Social Science Tower
  • May 7, 2026

  • Leadership role will enable the social sciences dean to help steer research agenda focused on pressing social, world challenges

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Bill Maurer, UC Irvine anthropology and law professor and social sciences dean, has been named to the Social Science Research Council Board of Directors. The distinguished role puts him in a position - alongside 20 renowned social scientists and leaders from academia, business and the philanthropic sector - to steer the council’s research agenda, focusing on meeting the most pressing challenges facing the social sciences and broader world.

Maurer’s research spans legal and economic anthropology and has shaped debates on the history of money, fintech and the cultural dimensions of economic life. His books include Recharting the Caribbean: Land, Law, and Citizenship in the British Virgin Islands (1997), Mutual Life, Limited: Islamic Banking, Alternative Currencies, Lateral Reason (2005), and Pious Property: Islamic Mortgages in the United States (2006). More recent works include How Would You Like to Pay? How Technology Is Changing the Future of Money (2015), Paid: Tales of Dongles, Checks, and Other Money Stuff (2017), Money at the Margins: Global Perspectives on Technology, Financial Inclusion, and Design (2018), and the six-volume A Cultural History of Money, from Antiquity to the Modern Age (2023, as general editor). In 2025, he was appointed co-editor in chief of the Law and Society Review.

Maurer is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a former fellow of the Filene Research Institute. From 2015 to 2020, he served on the U.S. National Research Council Board on Behavioral, Cognitive and Sensory Sciences. He has assisted in the analysis of banknote design and security and has worked in support of the credit union system as it adapts to new technologies. He has consulted for the British Museum, the Smithsonian and a range of other organizations. He is currently a member of the Orange County United Way Board and chairs its United for Financial Security program. At UC Irvine, he founded and directs the Institute for Money, Technology, and Financial Inclusion (IMTFI), and serves as co-PI for the Institute for Engineering AI for Society. He holds courtesy appointments in the UC Irvine School of Law and the Department of Criminology, Law & Society. He earned his bachelor’s at Vassar College and his master’s and Ph.D. at Stanford University.

The Social Science Research Council is an independent, international, nonprofit organization founded in 1923. The council fosters innovative research, nurtures new generations of social scientists, deepens how inquiry is practiced within and across disciplines, and mobilizes necessary knowledge on important public issues.

Maurer’s three-year board appointment begins in June.

 

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