About

Bill Maurer is Dean of the School of Social Sciences and Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. His research spans legal and economic anthropology and has shaped debates on the history of money, Islamic banking, offshore finance, 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. In addition to his scholarly work, 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 industry, non-profit, and philanthropic 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 UCI School of Law and the Department of Criminology, Law & Society. He earned his B.A. at Vassar College and his M.A. and Ph.D. at Stanford University.