Vic­tor­ia Hon­sel

My research looks at how accounting enters contexts where it has not traditionally been central, and how it becomes part of everyday work. I am particularly interested in how accounting logics take hold in practice—especially when they are not immediately visible, but embedded in routines, technologies, and organizational processes. My work is grounded in qualitative, interpretative, and often interdisciplinary research designs, drawing on interviews, ethnographic observations, and document analysis.

For example, I study how non-accounting professionals engage with accounting logics in their day-to-day work. This includes settings such as non-profit organizations, where social workers integrate imposed accountability approaches into their operations, as well as technologically advanced environments like the cockpit, where pilots work with systems that subtly embed accounting logics into how they fly. Across these contexts, I explore what happens when actors encounter, interpret, and work with accounting without necessarily being trained as accountants.

More broadly, my work also speaks to how accounting practices evolve in more established settings, particularly as new technologies reshape traditional assumptions of expertise and professional intuition. Thereby, I examine how established understandings of accounting are reconfigured as technological systems become more deeply integrated into decision-making processes. My research highlights how accounting is not simply implemented as designed, but is shaped through processes of interpretation, adaptation, and use. By focusing on how accounting logics enter new domains and operate in sometimes less visible ways, I aim to better understand how they come to matter in organizational settings.