Kangsan Lee 

Kangsan Lee is an Assistant Professor of Social Research and Public Policy at New York University Abu Dhabi and a faculty affiliate of the Business, Organizations, and Society program. He serves on the editorial board of Poetics: Journal of Empirical Research on Culture, the Media, and the Arts and the governing committee for the Business, Organizations, and Society program.

Lee's research explores how values are created and transformed across various social contexts, particularly in times of crisis and global transformation. His work focuses on the social construction of value in creative markets, such as the art world and financial markets like cryptocurrency. He uses a multi-method approach, combining computational techniques (machine learning and computer vision), surveys, and online experiments to investigate how individuals and institutions assign value under different social structures and uncertainties. His research also addresses how social value systems respond to global challenges, including technological disruptions driven by AI, economic instability, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

With an interdisciplinary focus, Lee applies economic sociology, the sociology of culture and art, and network analysis, collaborating with qualitative researchers to offer in-depth contextual understanding. He has contributed to major academic journals and books, including Social Forces, Science Advances, Nature: Scientific Reports, Poetics, Journal of International Money and Finance, Socius, Stanford University Press, Oxford Bibliographies in Sociology, and Elgar Encyclopedia of Organizational Sociology. He is currently developing a methodological framework using transfer learning to address data disparities in global art market research.

Lee has received support for his research from institutions such as the Buffett Institute for International Studies (Northwestern University), the American Assembly (Columbia University), and the Office of Research (Zayed University). Beyond academia, Lee has been featured as an invited expert on platforms such as SkyNews Arabia, MIT Enterprise Forum, Startup India (Government of India), and CultureSTATS (Department of Culture and Tourism, Abu Dhabi). He also serves on the advisory board of Maan, the Authority of Social Contribution, the UAE Government.