Dr May Hen-Smith
May Hen-Smith is a fiscal sociologist and socio-legal researcher interested in blockchain, decentralised finance (DeFi), digital assets, offshore finance, tax and the digital economy.
Academic interests
May Hen-Smith's current project is called 'Taxing Ghosts: Transnational Residency Issues in the Digital Economy' (2023-2026), a Leverhulme Trust funded study following 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 other ongoing project is a 10-year longitudinal study of women in offshore finance. It chronicles the experiences and career trajectories of women in offshore financial centres and compares those experiences to women in metropolitan financial centres.
May Hen-Smith's academic interests include:
- Tax
- Blockchain
- Digital economy
- Offshore financial centres.
Degrees obtained
- BA, Communication (Hons.), Simon Fraser University.
- MA, Communication, Simon Fraser University.
- PhD, Sociology, University of Cambridge.
Awards and prizes
- Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship, 2023.
- TaxCOOP 35 Leaders of the Future in Tax, 2020.
Biography
May Hen-Smith is based in the Faculty of Law. She currently holds a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Research Fellowship and Isaac Newton Trust Research Fellowship to study the impact of global tax policies on the digital economy.
She has worked as a researcher for McGill University (Law), the London School of Economics and Political Science (Sociology), University of Cambridge (Sociology), Simon Fraser University (Sociology and Anthropology) and the University of California, Irvine (Anthropology). She was also an intern at Microsoft Research, Cambridge (UK) where she studied the economic decision-making behaviours of cloud users. Prior to research, she worked for Canada Revenue Agency.
Her previous research (2011-2021) looked at the technical role of offshore financial centres in the global financial system. She spent several years conducting fieldwork in the Cayman Islands and has over 10 years of experience conducting extensive ethnographic research and interviews amongst the finance and legal professionals who live and work offshore.
Other interests
Olympic weightlifting, Crossfit.
Department link
Publications, links and resources
- De Cogan, D. & Hen, M (2018). Book Review: Building Trust in Taxation (2017). Edited by Bruno Peeters, Hans Gribnau and Jo Badisco. Cambridge Law Journal, 77(3). (Book review, 2 pages)
- Hen, M. (2018). "Sub-elites as fiduciary gatekeepers of global elites: a fiscal anthropology of the Cayman Islands offshore financial centre". In S. Chauvin, P. Clegg and B. Cousin (Eds.) Euro-Caribbean Societies in the 21st Century: Offshore Europe and its Discontents. Routledge. (Book chapter, 18 pages)
- Hen, M. (2017). "The appeal of tax!" Journal of Money Laundering Control, 20(1). (Editorial commentary, 2 pages)
- Hen, M. (2010). "Intellectual Property Policies for Canadian Universities". Centre for Policy Research for Science and Technology. Simon Fraser University. (Policy paper, 14 pages)
