Institutional Ethnography: An Interdisciplinary Feminist Approach to Social Research

We were pleased to invite interested scholars to a hands-on workshop on Institutional Ethnography (IE): a feminist approach to analysing texts and mapping organisational processes. We offered participants a very practical opportunity to familiarise themselves with IE and for them to leave the training course inspired to explore how IE could help them approach their research in an innovative and collaborative way.

This approach is applicable across the social sciences including health and disability studies, education, politics, gender studies, natural resource management & land planning. IE has strong interdisciplinary potential, and it is well equipped to deal with complexity while paying attention to difference.

Following an overview of IE as sociology, we presented case studies to show how it can be used and with what results. Attendees had time to think, discuss, and apply IE to their own research with the resources we shared with them.

Speakers

Dr Órla Meadhbh Murray, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship, Imperial College London. Co-convenor of the UK & Ireland Institutional Ethnography network and the European Institutional Ethnography network. Together with the course organiser, Dr Murray runs regular Institutional Ethnography courses for the UK National Centre for Research Methods. She has also delivered Institutional Ethnography training and talks at the University of Edinburgh, University of Bristol, University of Melbourne, University of Leicester and University of Antwerp.
Dr Murray set up the UK Institutional Ethnography Network in 2014 at the University of Edinburgh where she did her PhD in Sociology, a feminist Institutional Ethnography of how academics negotiate UK university audit processes. She is currently writing a monograph based on the PhD alongside other articles focused on abolitionist approaches to the university and imposter syndrome amongst marginalised STEM students.

Dr Adriana Suárez Delucchi, KHK Postdoctoral Fellow, geographer with expertise on Institutional Ethnography. Together with Dr Murray, Adriana has run five different training courses for the UK NCRM and the South West Doctoral Training Partnership. She co-founded and convenes the monthly ‘Institutional Ethnography Mentorship Seminars’ where advice is provided and discussions fostered to advance knowledge for PhD Students on how to utilize the approach.  Adriana is co-organising  the working group’s sessions for the ISA Conference in Melbourne 2023. She was recently invited to participate in the ‘Simply Institutional Ethnography’ book launch, Dorothy Smith’s latest publication.