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I am interested in the institutions, products and artifacts that individuals and society use and create to make sense of uncertainty. I understand uncertainty as a situation when "there is no valid basis of any kind for classifying instances" (Frank Knight, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit).
In my historical work on the Catholic Church, I interpreted miracles as cultural artifacts that helped individuals dealing with the political and social changes that gave birth to modernity.
In my work on the sharing economy, I see the development of trust as a the process that reduces the social and economic uncertainty of interacting with a stranger. My work investigates how technology is deployed for building trust in the online marketplaces of the sharing economy.
Further, I study the social consequences of the processes that technology has unleashed. I ask: to what extent are serendipity and magic still a part of human interactions in a world ruled by algorithms?
My intellectual trajectory suggests that social scientists may have a new role, one in which they produce a knowledge that is applicable in building online spaces where individuals interact.
My updated academic profile is here.