Virág Molnár holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University and is currently a Professor of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam. Before moving to Amsterdam, she was Associate Professor of Sociology at the New School for Social Research in New York. Her research explores the intersections of culture, politics, and social change in Eastern Europe, with special focus on urban culture, the built environment, and material culture. She has written about architecture and state formation in socialist and postsocialist Eastern Europe, the post-1989 reconstruction of Berlin, and the new housing landscape of postsocialist cities. Current projects include a comparative study of emerging markets for street art in New York, Berlin and Budapest; the politics of urban rodent control; and the cultural production of nationalist populism in contemporary Hungary. Her book Building the State: Architecture, Politics, and State Formation in Postwar Central Europe (Routledge, 2013) received the Mary Douglas Prize from the American Sociological Association. She has been a visiting fellow at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University, the Humboldt Universität in Berlin, the American Academy in Berlin, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship, and the American Council of Learned Societies, among others.