My winning proposal: Twenty-first century ethnography

A traditional approach to a modern topic—cryptocurrency—nets a major ESRC win

Alex Preda, professor of accounting, accountability and financial management at King’s Business School, was well established as an authority on the sociology of financial markets when he decided to break new ground—both for him and the field—with a project investigating cryptoasset firms. But he was going to do it in a traditional way, by undertaking an ethnography.

This would be the first time Preda had attempted such a major ethnography of a group working in the digital domain, and he knew he would have to work hard to convince reviewers he was the right person to lead it. Happily, he did, and work on his £654,444 Economic and Social Research Council Research Grant began in July 2020.