Dr May Hen-Smith holds a PhD at the University of Cambridge, Jesus College. She read economic sociology in the Department of Sociology. She is a fiscal sociologist and socio-legal researcher interested global tax issues and the digital economy. She is interested in tax, tech, regulations affecting the digital economy, and offshore financial centres. She is also working on a 10-year longitudinal study of women in offshore and onshore financial centres. May is actively involved in all aspects of international research and dialogue on anti-corruption, taxation, tax research in the social sciences, and fiscal anthropology of tax. She is interested in all things tax: 1) How it makes people behave, 2) How industries are formed around interpretation of it, and 3) How in the pursuit of 1) and 2) can influence the culture of indigenous populations.
She specializes in the study of a wide range of economic phenomena using ethnographic inquiry and qualitative research methods. Her current project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada), Leverhulme Trust (UK) and Isaac Newtown Trust (UK), is called "Follow-the-technology". It is a 3-year study which follows the experiences of start-ups and established tech companies as they navigate through the economic systems which generate their value and the regulatory systems which constrain their growth.
Her previous research (2011-2021) looked at the technical role of offshore financial centres in the global financial system. She spent ten years conducting fieldwork in the Cayman Islands and other metropolitan financial centres and has conducted extensive ethnographic research and interviews amongst the finance and legal professionals who live and work there.
