​Modern Slavery Community of Practice is providing research support to Professor Finia Kuhlmann from Paris HEC University on her project to explore the practices of giving account by survivor leaders in the modern slavery and human trafficking (MSHT) sector. While critical accounting research has examined how emancipatory and counter accounts amplify marginalized voices, it has largely focused on how organizations account for vulnerable groups rather than how vulnerable individuals account for themselves.

​Responding to recent calls to take marginalized perspectives seriously, this study shifts analytical attention to the act of account-giving itself. Drawing on Judith Butler’s theorization of vulnerability and the ethical demand of giving an account, we foreground how account-giving is simultaneously constrained and enabled by external frameworks, and reflected on my account-givers. The paper seeks to contribute to critical accounting scholarship by (1) offering novel empirical insight into account-giving, (2) developing implications for organizations and researchers demanding accounts from vulnerable people, and (3) theorizing account-giving as a contingent and reflexive practice. In doing so, it rethinks accountability through the lens of vulnerability, emphasizing both its risks and possibilities for recognition.

Finia Kuhlmann,
HEC Paris Assistant Professor
Principal Investigator of the Survivor Account Giving Project