The EAA Virtual Activities Committee is delighted to announce that the next Academic Empathy Dialogue on Tax and Taxation will be held on April 20, 2026 at 3:00pm Brussels time. 

This Academic Empathy Dialogue brings together Caren Sureth-Sloane and Lotta Björklund Larsen to explore how different disciplinary perspectives shape our understanding of taxation. The Dialogue will be moderated by Diana Falsetta. While both scholars study the role of taxes in shaping individual and societal behavior, their approaches differ markedly. Caren Sureth-Sloane’s work, grounded in economics and accounting, examines how taxation influences corporate decisions such as investment, risk-taking, and international business activity, as well as firms’ tax compliance and its enforcement. Lotta Björklund Larsen draws on qualitative social research and ethnographic methods to study how various stakeholders – individual and corporate taxpayers as well as tax administrators – on the tax arena interpret and practice taxation. She has explored issues such as trust, legitimacy, fairness surrounding compliance and takes a special interest in how various epistemologies foster tax compliance.

By bringing together economic and anthropological perspectives, this dialogue seeks to foster mutual understanding across research traditions and encourage new ways of thinking about taxation as both an economic and a social phenomenon. The discussion will highlight opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration and invite accounting researchers to reflect on how different methodological lenses can enrich the study of tax systems and taxpayer behavior.

Registration is open at this link.