Aris is an Associate Professor of Sociology at University College London and Director of the UCL Centre for Capitalism Studies. He is the author of Speculative Communities: Living with Uncertainty in a Financialized World (University of Chicago Press, 2022) and Real Fake, which will be published by MIT Press in 2026. Aris's research traces the multifaceted impact of financial markets on everyday life and on our political imagination. His widely acclaimed theory of capitalism has developed a critical vision that connects speculation, politics, and progressive futurity in the struggle for financial justice and social solidarity. His work has been featured in The New Yorker, Bookforum and the Locarno Film Festival, and his public writing has appeared in The Guardian, Aeon, The Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Public Seminar and other publications.

Aris will join THE NEW INSTITUTE in the academic year 2024/25 as Chair of the program 'Futures of Capitalism'.

The World Speculation Made
in: The Boston Review, 2023

Board Games as Social Media: Toward an Enchanted Inquiry of Digital Capitalism
with Haiven and Kingsmith, in: South Atlantic Quarterly, 2023

Speculative Communities: Living with Uncertainty in a Financialized World
University of Chicago Press, 2022

Re-Imagining the Future in Financial Capitalism
in: Journal of Cultural Economy, 2020