Besnik Pula 

Position
Postdoctoral scholar under the ASA/NSF postdoctoral fellowship program
Bio/Description

Besnik Pula recently joined the Center for the Study of Social Organization as a postdoctoral scholar under the ASA/NSF postdoctoral fellowship program. Prior to that, Besnik was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Binghamton University and a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. Trained at the University of Michigan as a comparative historical sociologist, Besnik is currently researching postsocialist economic transformations in Central and Eastern Europe, including the origins and impact of the east European debt crisis of the 1980s on the demise of state socialism and economic restructuring and the transformation of industrial systems since the 1990s. His dissertation on state policies of legal reform and the regional dynamics of agrarian conflict in Albania’s communist mobilization was supported by research grants from the Fulbright-Hays program, International Research and Exchanges Board and the American Council for Learned Societies, and was awarded Honorable Mention for the Theda Skocpol Best Dissertation Award from the Section of Comparative and Historical Sociology of the American Sociological Association. Besnik also holds an M.A. in Russian, Eurasian and East European Studies from Georgetown University and a B.A. in political science (with distinction) from Hunter College – City University of New York.