The Research Institute for Work and Society (HIVA) of KU Leuven is organizing an international conference on the measurement of the undeclared economy and tax evasion and avoidance, taking place on March 27th in Leuven, Belgium. It brings together scholars, tax authorities and national accountants to discuss the state-of-the-art on measuring the undeclared economy and the fight against social and fiscal fraud.

Alarmed by the dramatic events unfolding in Ukraine, as H2020 ITN MARKETS fellows and supervisors, we express our condemnation of the reprehensible actions of the Russian government and its military aggression against sovereign and democratic Ukraine.

The purpose of the first and in-person MARKETS meeting was to get to know each other and discuss our research in a rather relaxing and informal atmosphere. The meeting was held during the Eurasian Insights EISCAS Final Conference in Ghent in September in which MARKETS project had two panels on informality and fieldwork process. The conference environment facilitated our conversations on informal practices, governance, borders, and (post-)colonialism, while the sunny weather gave us the chance to explore the city and each other’s career paths. Not to mention Ghent “classic” mussels & chips places that allowed many of those conversations and discussions. I think it was a great chance for all of us to share our experiences and challenges in the early PhD research stage. So, here I take the opportunity to reflect on what has been discussed during the conference panels and in-between.

The Global Informality Project is an interdisciplinary research project led by UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies. It provides the first multimedia online resource that explores informal practices and structures from a global perspective. Through its comparative and ethnographic investigations, the encyclopaedia traces the existence of multiple moralities, which account for the resilience of informal practices, and investigates their legitimacy and institutional arrangements as well as the cultural and historical contexts of informality. This online resource is truly international: it includes entries from 5 continents, over 75 countries and over 250 researchers.Check out the online encyclopaedia and the published volumes.