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Senior Research Fellow, International Centre for Tax and Development
Senior Research Associate, University of Toronto
Vanessa van den Boogaard is a political scientist specialising in taxation and development, with a particular focus on informal taxation, informal economies, and statebuilding and fragility. She is a Senior Research Fellow at the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD) and a Senior Research Associate at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto.
Vanessa sits on the ICTD's Research Leadership Team and co-leads its research programmes on informality and tax, gender and tax, and tax, conflict, and fragility. She co-leads the global Informality and Tax Community of Practice and co-edits the ICTD and Danish Institute of International Studies Roadblocks and Revenue working paper series.
Vanessa is a Participant in the United Nations Tax and Gender Subcommittee, an Honourary Associate at the Institute of Development Studies, an Individual Member of WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment Globalizing and Organizing), and a Fellow at the Centre on Armed Groups.
Vanessa holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Toronto. Her doctoral research received the Vincent Lemieux Prize for the best PhD thesis in political science in Canada (2019-2020) and an honourable mention for the African Politics Conference Group Lynne Rienner Best Dissertation Award (2022). She was named one of the TaxCOOP's 35 leaders of the future.
Alongside her academic research, Vanessa's policy and advisory work spans the political economy of tax reform, taxation of informal economies, tax and gender, local revenue mobilisation and fiscal decentralisation, and taxation and statebuilding in fragile and conflict-affected contexts.
She works closely with governments and revenue administrations, including in Sierra Leone, Ghana, and Somalia, and regularly engages with international and regional organisations and development partners, including the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, United Nations, African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF), and UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO).
Her consulting and advisory portfolio includes work with the World Bank, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), Crown Agents, the Danish Refugee Council, and Open Society Foundations.
Key areas of research and policy expertise
Key areas of research and policy expertise
Informal taxation and fiscal systems beyond the state
informal and community-based taxation
the role of traditional authorities in formal and informal taxation
co-financing mechanisms and hybrid fiscal and governance institutions
armed group and roadblock taxation
zakat
Taxation of informal economies
impacts on income and gender equity
simplified tax regimes
market taxation
informal cross-border trade
Politics of taxation and development
the political economy of taxation,
informal institutions within tax administration,
tax reform coalitions,
the role of civil society in supporting more accountable and equitable taxation,
tax accountability, transparency, and taxpayer engagement,
Taxation, conflict, and statebuilding
tax and statebuilding
rebuilding fiscal systems after conflict
armed group taxation
relationships between taxation, fragility, and resilience
Gender and tax
gendered impacts of tax policy and administration
gender-responsive and transformative policymaking
women in the informal economy
Sustainable tourism taxation
sustainable and equitable tourism taxation
taxation in small island developing states (SIDS)
Vanessa's work is methodologically diverse, incorporating mixed methods, qualitative, quantitative, and experimental research approaches.
She has extensive field research and policy engagement experience across Africa and South Asia, especially in:
Sierra Leone
Ghana
Somalia
the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)
Pakistan
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