Lotta Björklund Larsen‘s research is broadly based in economic, legal and moral anthropology with a particular focus on taxation. “Why we pay tax, why we avoid doing so and how we are made to pay tax” are questions that bring to fore people’s relation to state, market and fellow citizens. Lotta is currently Research Fellow at the Tax Administration Research Centre, University of Exeter Business School, Associate Fellow at World Academy of Arts and Science and co-organize the Anthropology of Tax network.
Through her research she has engaged with various actors at the tax arena. She has addressed citizens justifications purchasing informal work, conducted three years of fieldwork at the Swedish Tax Agency, interviewed MNE’s on cooperative compliance projects and addressed the failure of a tax lottery in Georgia (Caucasus). Through her research she takes interest in knowledge that shapes people’s lives, collaborative anthropologies, quantification of society, and the digitization of society.
The methodological assumptions across disciplines for addressing taxation issues are of particular interest for her. If we are to understand the obscenely complex issue that taxation is, she is convinced of the need for a multi-disciplinary approach.