NCRM – Introducing Institutional Ethnography: An Interdisciplinary Feminist Approach to Social Research

This workshop will introduce Institutional Ethnography (IE), an interdisciplinary feminist approach to social research that focuses on how texts and language organise our everyday lives. IE is not just a methodology, but a comprehensive feminist ontology of how the social world works which advocates using a form of standpoint to explore from specific perspectives. IE research ‘takes sides’, often researching as, with, and/or for, marginalised groups who are often made invisible by, or excluded from, organisations and institutions.
The focus on texts – conceptualised as replicable materials objects that carry messages – allows IE researchers to ethnographically explore the organising power of language and institutions, made material in institutional texts which act as bridges between different people and places.

Presenter: Dr Orla Murray, Dr Liz Ablett and Dr Adriana Suarez-Delucchi

Find out more information and preparatory reading here

The overall aim of the workshop is to provide attendees with a comprehensive overview of institutional ethnography as an approach and the opportunity to translate their own research ideas and projects into an IE research proposal or small piece of text-focused analysis. This hands on workshop is suitable for students, academics, and anyone else interested in feminist methodologies, text and discourse analysis, and institutional or organisational ethnographies. No prior training in, or knowledge of, IE is required.

The course covers:

• An overview of the work of feminist sociologist, Dorothy Smith, who developed Institutional Ethnography
• Three Institutional Ethnography case studies from Sociology and Human Geography
• Three text and discourse analysis methods within the Institutional Ethnography approach
• How to translate your research ideas or projects into an Institutional Ethnography proposal/plan

By the end of the course participants will:

• understand of the origin and development of Institutional Ethnography
• know how to use Institutional Ethnography to analyse texts, processes, and discourses
• have an outline of how their research ideas could become an Institutional Ethnography project

The course is aimed at academics, students, any other qualitative researchers or policymakers interested in analysing organisational processes.  Participants must have at least some experience in qualitative research methods, but no experience of Institutional Ethnography is required.

Register here