Our Team

Dr Wilson Prichard‘s research focuses on the relationship between taxation and citizen demands for improved governance in Sub-Saharan Africa. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and Department of Political Science, a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, and the CEO of the ICTD.

Dr Giulia Mascagni‘s main research interests relate to taxation, public finance, and evaluation of public policy in low-income countries. She is an economist and obtained her PhD in 2014 at the University of Sussex (Department of Economics). Giulia is the Research Director at ICTD. She is a Research Fellow in the Governance Cluster at the Institute of Development Studies (UK), as well as Research Associate at the Institute of Fiscal Studies (UK) and Associate Fellow at Johns Hopkins University SAIS (Italy).

Dr Martin Hearson researches the politics of international business taxation, and in particular the relationship between developed and developing countries. He uses field interviews, archival documentation and novel datasets to study how international tax agreements are negotiated. Before joining ICTD, he was a fellow in international political economy at the London School of Economics, teaching courses on political economy and global financial governance. He spent a decade working in the charity sector, and continues to collaborate with development NGOs and intergovernmental organisations in much of his research.

Dr Vanessa van den Boogaard is based at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy in Toronto. She received her doctorate in Political Science at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation explores informal taxation and state-society relations in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Vanessa leads the ICTD’s new programme on civil society engagement in tax reform, and co-leads the research programme on informal taxation with Dr Max Gallien. She also continues to be involved in our research on gender and tax.

Dr Max Gallien is a political scientist specialising the politics of informal and illegal economies, development politics and the political economy of the Middle East and North Africa. He completed his PhD, titled “Smugglers and States: Illegal Trade in the Political Settlements of North Africa” at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is based in Brighton at the Institute of Development Studies and co-leads the research programme on informality and taxation with Dr Vanessa van den Boogaard, and is involved in the ICTD’s capacity building programme.

Dr Giovanni Occhiali is a Development Economist based at the Institute of Development Studies, where he works on a number of projects related to Tax Administration and Compliance, Tax and Governance and co-leads ICTD’s capacity building programme together with Dr Max Gallien. His research focuses on Sub-Saharan Africa, and outside of the field of taxation his main interests are energy economics and industrial policies. He holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham and prior to joining ICTD, he was a Researcher at the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei and an Overseas Development Institute Fellow at the National Revenue Authority of Sierra Leone.

Dr Colette Nyirakamana is an ICTD consultant who works as the Interim Programme Lead for the African Property Tax Initiative. Her research focuses on local finances, in particular the building of fiscal autonomy in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) subnational governments. She studies the reasons why, despite the significant potential of financial resources, SSA cities fail to raise enough revenue. Colette’s research draws on institutional and political economy theories to show how institutional rules and incentives and local political dynamics create favourable and unfavourable conditions for effective revenue mobilisation. Her research highlights how weak fiscal autonomy limits the capacity of cities to finance public services valued by citizens. She completed her doctoral degree in Comparative Public Policy at McMaster University in Canada.

Dr Jalia Kangave‘s work focuses on the taxation of High Net Worth Individuals, Gender and Tax and research capacity building. She previously served as the Principal of the East African School of Taxation, worked with PricewaterhouseCoopers Uganda as a tax consultant and lectured at the Kampala International University. Jalia is currently the lead consultant for our gender and taxation programme. She is also involved in our capacity building programme and in work on taxing High Net Worth Individuals in Africa.

Doris Akol is an ICTD consultant working as a Senior Policy and Engagement Advisor for the DIGITAX programme. She has over twenty (20) years of experience in taxation policy and administration, corporate governance and public sector administration. During this time, she has held various positions in the Uganda Revenue Authority (“URA”) and in rendering tax and business advice to the Private Sector, at PricewaterhouseCoopers Uganda Country Office. Until March 2020, Doris was the Commissioner General and a member of the Board of Directors at the URA.  She was a member of the Council of African Tax Administrators’ From (ATAF) (2014-2020).  Doris had first-hand experience in designing revenue mobilisation policies, primarily geared at raising revenue but also at making administration efficient. Her areas of interest are the interplays between policy, law, institutional arrangements and inter and intra-party / sectoral coordination as well as evidence based formulation of tax policy and tax administration. Doris has an Master of Laws(LL.M) from McGill University and an Executive Certificate in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Dr Fabrizio Santoro is based at the Institute of Development Studies, working as a Postdoctoral Fellow on empirical studies on tax compliance in Rwanda, Eswatini and Uganda, as well as on informal tax in Somalia. He also recently joined the DIGITAX programme as Research Lead. Fabrizio’s main research interests relate to governance, public finance, and taxation, with a strong focus on impact evaluation methodologies and quantitative analysis. Holding a MSc in Economic and Social Sciences at Bocconi University (Milan), Fabrizio completed his PhD in Economics at University of Sussex. He also worked as a Research Associate at Innovations for Poverty Action in Myanmar for a year and a half before joining the ICTD.

Dr Andualem T. Mengistu is a Research Fellow at the Policy Studies Institute in Addis Ababa; Research Director of the Ethiopian Tax Research Network (ETRN); and an actively engaged consultant ICTD researcher. Andualem received his PhD from the Stockholm School of Economics, while his thesis focused on the workings of the monetary markets of developing countries and addressed such issues as whether the East African Community countries are ready to form a monetary union. His current research interests focus on monetary policy in less developed monetary markets and tax systems in developing countries.

Girma Gebretsadik did his Master’s degree in International Revenue Administration. He is based in Addis Ababa, and has worked with the federal revenue administration for a decade in various capacities including Head of the Large Taxpayers Office, Deputy Director General for Corporate Functions, and Head of R&D Directorate at the former Ethiopian Revenues and Customs Authority. He is accredited Tax Administration Diagnostic Assessment Tool (TADAT) Assessor and participated in the TADAT Assessment of Ethiopia and DRC. Currently, he is an independent consultant focusing on tax, as well as the Executive Secretary of the Ethiopian Tax Research Network (ETRN).

Dr Olly Owen is the Lead Research Consultant for the NTRN as well as co-investigator (with Dr Tom Goodfellow) on the project Taxation, Property Rights and the Social Contract in Lagos. He is an ESRC Future Research Leaders Fellow at Oxford Department for International Development (ODID) where he is currently working on a three-year study of new transformations in revenue and fiscal governance in Nigeria, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. At ODID he also continues work with a focus on policing structures and practices in Nigeria and work related to longstanding interests in politics and governance in the West African sub-region and in political anthropology. After working in London and Lagos, first with West African civil society groups, and then as an investment risk analyst Olly completed a DPhil at Oxford University’s Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, undertaking an ethnographic study of the Nigerian Police Force.

Michael Falade is an international development researcher and evaluation professional based in Lagos, Nigeria with more than a decade of work experience on various FCDO and other international organisations funded research projects. He is interested in policy-centered interventions focusing on governance, agriculture, public health, and other social issues as well as in development intervention evaluations. Michael holds a Master’s degree in public health. Prior to his work as consultant with ICTD as the Executive Secretary of the NTRN, Michael worked as a public policy analyst and research associate at a Lagos Policy Think Tank.

Christopher Wales is an ICTD consultant working as a Senior Research Advisor for the DIGITAX programme. He has worked with Prime Ministers and Finance Ministers in many countries on economic and fiscal policy, fiscal institutions, revenue administration, labour market issues and pension policy. He was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers for the UK Government (1997-2003), led the Global Tax and Governance Team at PwC (2012-16), was a partner in the tax practice of Arthur Andersen (1990-97), was a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs, and later Managing Director of a life assurance company. Chris is currently Chairperson of the Board of Directors of the Rwanda Social Security Board, member of the Council of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and member of the Advisory Board of the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation, which he was instrumental in founding. He has worked extensively with think tanks and civil society. Chris has an MA in history and a PhD in medieval history, both from Cambridge University.

Xaver Schenker is the Technical Lead Expert at ICTD working for the Local Government Revenue Initiative (LoGRI). His interests are mainly on the implementation side as a liaison between governments, donors, implementing partners and the research team with the goal of providing assistance for state-of-the-art implementation of local revenue reform projects. Equally, disseminating lessons learned in collaboration with the research team as tools for interested stakeholders is one of his priorities. Xaver holds a M.Sc in Economics from the School of Business and Economics at Nova University in Lisbon.

Moyo Arewa is based at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy in Toronto. He is responsible for supporting the management and implementation of the ICTD’s research and capacity building programmes, as well as helping to advance several programmes, including the African Property Tax Initiative, a new programme on taxation and digitalisation, and expanded engagement with civil society organisations. Prior to joining ICTD, he was a Policy Development Officer at the City of Toronto. Moyo received his Master’s degree from the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

Adrienne Lees is a Research Officer working primarily on projects relating to tax administration and investment, tax attitudes, and on the DIGITAX programme. Her research interests relate to taxation, public finance, and economic development, particularly for Sub-Saharan Africa. She has recently completed an Overseas Development Institute Fellowship in the Tax Policy Department at the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development in Uganda. Adrienne holds an MSc in Economics for Development from the University of Oxford and will begin her PhD in Economics at the University of Sussex next year.

Soukayna Remmal is based at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy in Toronto. She is a research and communications officer. She holds a Master in Public Policy (MPP) from Science Po Paris and a Master of Global Affairs (MGA) from the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto.
Prior to joining ICTD,  Soukayna served in 2020 as a graduate research fellow at the School of Cities at U of T, and has completed internships at Action Against Hunger Canada, the Embassy of the Kingdom of Morocco to the European Union, and the Policy Center for the New South.

Professor Mick Moore is a political economist. His broad research interests are in the domestic and international dimensions of good and bad governance in poor countries, focusing specifically on taxation. He has done extensive field research in Africa and Asia, especially Sri Lanka, Taiwan and India. He is the founding CEO of the ICTD, Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, UK, and co-author of Taxing Africa with Wilson Prichard and Odd-Helge Fjeldstad published by Zed Press London and HSRC Press Pretoria in 2018.

Professor Sol Picciotto (BA Oxford, JD Chicago) is an emeritus professor at Lancaster University, a Senior Adviser of the Tax Justice Network, coordinator of the BEPS Monitoring Group, and a member of the UN Tax Committee’s subcommittee on dispute resolution. His research for the ICTD focuses on the taxation of transnational corporations with special reference to developing countries. Professor Picciotto has taught at the universities of Dar es Salaam (1964-1968), Tanzania, and at Warwick (1968-1992) and Lancaster (1992-2007), the United Kingdom. Professor Picciotto was also Scientific Director of the Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law (2009-2011). He is the author of International Business Taxation and Regulating Global Corporate Capitalism, and of several co-written books, as well as numerous chapters and articles on various international tax issues and other aspects of international business and economic law.

Professor Odd-Helge Fjeldstad is an economist working at CMI, Norway, focusing on public sector reforms, mainly related to taxation and revenue administration; including tax evasion, fiscal corruption, capital flight, intergovernmental fiscal relations, and local government tax reform. Fjeldstad has extensive experience from research and policy analysis in Eastern and Southern Africa and the Middle East. He has also been advisor for several African governments on public financial management, and has worked as consultant for bilateral and multilateral development organisations, including the FCDO, Norad, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, OECD, IFC and the World Bank.

Michael C. Durst is a long-time US tax practitioner, an author on international taxation and developing countries, a former government official and law professor, and an ICTD researcher. He has practiced extensively in the field of international taxation, both in the private sector and in the US government, as Director of the IRS Advance Pricing Agreement Program. Michael has published many articles, in both academic and professional journals, on issues of international taxation, particularly as they affect developing countries. Recently, with support from ICTD, he has completed an extensive analysis of the legal and administrative aspects of implementing a system of unitary taxation.

Sripriya Iyengar Srivatsa is a Research Associate at ICTD working on the Gender and Tax project with a focus on tax compliance. Prior to this, she was an Overseas Development Institute Fellow at the Ministry of Finance in Sierra Leone where her work has covered data-for-development, research capacity building initiatives, and studying the labour market implications of household care-burden in Sierra Leone. She is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge where her doctoral research agenda is closely tied to ICTD’s interests in the political economy of taxation and sub-national revenues. She obtained her Master’s Degree in Political Economy from SOAS, University of London, and previously worked as a legislative researcher in the Indian Parliament.

Nicolas Orgeira is working as a consultant Research Associate, primarily on tax perception in Sierra Leone and on tax burden in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Prior to joining the ICTD, Nicolas worked on survey implementation in Ghana, France and Burkina Faso for two years, in various capacities. His work included topics ranging from early child development to local governance.

Rasmus Corlin Christensen was recently awarded his PhD from the Copenhagen Business School. His main research interest is in the political and professional foundations of the rules and practices of international taxation. Based in Copenhagen, Rasmus works with the ICTD as a consultant on research and policy engagement related to global negotiations on taxing the digitalising economy.

Dr Alexander Ezenagu is a consultant Research Associate for the ICTD and Assistant Professor at the College of Law at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), Qatar. A trade and tax law expert, he specializes in international tax law, domestic taxes, tax avoidance and commercial aspects of illicit financial flows, trade and investment advisory. He obtained his Ph.D. in international tax law from McGill University, Canada, and holds a Master of Law degree (LL.M) from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.

As a researcher, Alexander focuses on tax law and policy issues, with emphasis on the relationship between taxation and economic development and on the role of government and non-government institutions and actors in the creation of tax policy norms.

Dr Wilson Prichard‘s research focuses on the relationship between taxation and citizen demands for improved governance in Sub-Saharan Africa. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and Department of Political Science, a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, and the CEO of the ICTD.

Dr Giulia Mascagni‘s main research interests relate to taxation, public finance, and evaluation of public policy in low-income countries. She is an economist and obtained her PhD in 2014 at the University of Sussex (Department of Economics). Giulia is the Research Director at ICTD. She is a Research Fellow in the Governance Cluster at the Institute of Development Studies (UK), as well as Research Associate at the Institute of Fiscal Studies (UK) and Associate Fellow at Johns Hopkins University SAIS (Italy).

James Murdoch is based at the Institute of Development Studies. Prior to joining ICTD, James worked in a variety of non-profits in numerous countries in Europe, Africa and Asia. Some of James’ previous positions include working as the Global Operations Manager of the Youth Career Initiative (YCI), the CEO of Camara Education Zambia, and the Communications and Fundraising Manager of Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation Vietnam. As the ICTD Programme Manager, James provides overall coordination and supervision for ICTD activities.

Rhiannon McCluskey is based at the Institute of Development Studies. She completed her MA in Governance and Development, writing her dissertation on the effectiveness of donor initiatives to build capacity in international taxation in Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Kenya. She has also conducted research on social accountability for the Swiss Development Cooperation and the Making All Voices Count Programme. She is responsible for the development and implementation of the research uptake and communications strategy across the ICTD’s programmes. She leads on research dissemination via various channels, and is the primary contact for stakeholder relations and the media.

Moyo Arewa is based at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy in Toronto. He is responsible for supporting the management and implementation of the ICTD’s research and capacity building programmes, as well as helping to advance several programmes, including the African Property Tax Initiative, a new programme on taxation and digitalisation, and expanded engagement with civil society organisations. Prior to joining the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, he was a Policy Development Officer at the City of Toronto. Moyo received his Master’s degree from the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

Laura Munoz is an ICTD consultant working as the Programme Lead for the DIGITAX Programme. She has worked on digital finance and financial inclusion for the past 15 years, working in many African and Latin American countries. Prior to joining ICTD, she worked as Senior Manager and Payments Lead at Cenfri, an independent think tank where she managed a broad portfolio of research projects focused on digital financial services and payments. She has also worked as Business Development Director at Microcred Senegal, and as Technical Advisor to UNCDF, among others. Laura holds a Master’s in international business administration from the Centre of Economic and Commercial studies in Spain, and a Master in translation and interpreting from the University of Granada, Spain.

Simon Rees is based at the Institute of Development Studies and is responsible for financial administration, information management, travel management, assisting with event organisation and providing general support to the team.

Kate Arnill Graham is based at the Institute of Development Studies. As a project manager, she manages the contracting and deliverables of projects, with a focus on those funded by the FCDO. Kate’s background is in managing and coordinating research and consultancy projects in both Canada and the UK. Prior to ICTD, she worked at the Institute for Employment Studies, where she was the deputy project manager on large survey projects, oversaw staff resource planning, and coordinated funding activities.

Oliver Roy is based at the Institute of Development Studies where he works as Project Coordinator within ICTD. Oliver is primarily responsible for coordinating the ICTD publications process and organising both internal and external events; he also provides general coordination and administrative support the wider ICTD team.

Rhea Millward-Thompson studied her Bachelors degree in Politics and Sociology. During this time, she developed an interest in international relations and development. She is now based at the Institute of Development Studies where she works as Project Support Officer within ICTD. She is responsible for providing administrative and general support to the team with travel, events and information management.

Texeira is based at the Institute of Development Studies. As a Project Support Officer, she assists the ICTD team with general administration including financial work, travel booking and meeting organising.

Prior to ICTD, Texeira worked at Itad where she assisted the Project Management Unit with project administration. She worked across the company supporting the Governance, FCAS, Gender, Inclusive Growth, Health and Climate Change themes with contractual and financial admin.

Diana Szpotowicz is based at the Institute of Development Studies. She began her career as a journalist in Canada, working in television news as well as completing overseas assignments at several summer and winter Olympic Games. She earned her MSc Anthropology and Development Management degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2015 and has worked as a communications strategist for NGOs and government agencies in the international development sector for the past six years. She always puts storytelling at the forefront of her work, including in an award-winning documentary film series on open data and modern farming practices.

Soukayna Remmal is based at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy in Toronto. She is a research and communications officer. She holds a Master in Public Policy (MPP) from Science Po Paris and a Master of Global Affairs (MGA) from the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto.
Prior to joining ICTD,  Soukayna served in 2020 as a graduate research fellow at the School of Cities at U of T, and has completed internships at Action Against Hunger Canada, the Embassy of the Kingdom of Morocco to the European Union, and the Policy Center for the New South.