Bill Maurer (PhD Stanford U., 1994) is a cultural anthropologist and sociolegal scholar. His work explores the technological infrastructures, legal systems, and social relations of exchange and payment, from cowries to credit cards and cryptocurrencies. As an anthropologist, he is interested in the broad range of technologies people have used throughout history and across cultures to figure value and conduct transactions. He has particular expertise in alternative, experimental, and cooperative forms of money and finance, payment technologies, and their legal implications. He has published on topics ranging from offshore financial services to mobile phone-enabled money transfers, Islamic finance, alternative currencies, blockchain/distributed ledger systems, and the future of money.

Professor Maurer is currently co-editor of the Princeton Series in Culture and Technology and associate editor of the Journal of Cultural Economy. He is on the editorial boards of the Poverty Interrupted book series with the University of California Press and the Culture and Economic Life book series with Stanford University Press. He is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Globalization, the Journal of Islamic Accounting and Business Research, and Cultural Critique. He served as co-editor of PoLAR: The Political and Legal Anthropology Review from 1996-1999, in addition to other editorial service and extensive manuscript reviewing for journals in anthropology, sociology, geography, economics, political economy, law and society, and other fields.