Sociology

Chair for Sociology & Blockchain

The Chair for Sociology & Blockchain investigates how blockchain technologies reshape social structures, institutions, and interactions. Through a humanities-based approach, the chair examines themes such as trust, governance, and collective organization, highlighting blockchain’s broader societal implications beyond its technical applications.

What happens to economic life when blockchain and digital finance are shaped not only by code and markets, but also by culture, institutions, and social relations? The Chair for Sociology & Blockchain at ZIBR investigates the social dimensions of blockchain, exploring how technology, trust, and culture influence financial behaviour and economic action. This research examines both theoretical and empirical questions at the intersection of economic sociology, the social studies of finance, and behavioural economics.
Social Relations and Financial Behaviour
Blockchain technologies interact with deeply rooted social dynamics. The chair studies how networks of trust, cultural norms, and institutional frameworks shape investing, borrowing, lending, and risk-taking in blockchain-driven environments.
Culture, Institutions, and Technology
Financial decision-making cannot be explained by markets alone. Research explores how blockchain-based innovation is mediated by social and institutional contexts, revealing new effects of culture and governance on decentralised finance.
Sociology of Finance and Innovation
The chair builds on traditions in economic sociology and the social studies of finance to analyse how blockchain reconfigures markets and financial practices — and what this means for inequality, regulation, and economic transformation.

This chair explores how blockchain transforms finance and the economy when viewed through the lens of sociology, culture, and social relations.

Prof. Dr. Adam Hayes
Professor of Sociology and Blockchain
Get to know the Chair
The Chair for Sociology & Blockchain contributes to a richer understanding of blockchain by highlighting its human, cultural, and institutional dimensions. By bridging sociology, economics, and finance studies, the chair brings new insights to debates about digitalisation and financial innovation.
A joint endeavor of the University of Lucerne and the Canton of Zug
Email
info@zibr.ch
Address
Dammstrasse 16, 6300 Zug
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