Introducing Institutional Ethnography: An Interdisciplinary Feminist Approach to Social Research

This online 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 an entire approach to research with a specific ontology of how the social world works and the organising role of texts and language.

In IE, the researcher ‘takes sides’ using a specific version of standpoint to explore how institutions work in practice rooted in peoples’ experiences. This often involves researching as, with, or alongside marginalised groups and making visible how institutions exclude or make invisible certain groups of people and experiences. 

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 and do a 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 Institutional Ethnography and the work of feminist sociologist, Dorothy Smith, who developed Institutional Ethnography 
• Case studies of Institutional Ethnography research projects to show how it works in practice in different disciplines
• How to translate your research into an Institutional Ethnography project using a research proposal framework
• Practical explanation of how to do text and discourse analysis within Institutional Ethnography through a short text analysis activity 

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 

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

Preparatory Reading

Required:

• 1 hour lecture by Dorothy Smith summarising Institutional Ethnography - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RI2KEy9NDw
• Murray, Ó.M., 2020. Text, Process, Discourse: Doing feminist text analysis in institutional ethnography, Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2020.1839162

Desirable:

• Earles, J., & Crawley, S. L. 2020. Institutional ethnography. In P. Atkinson, S. Delamont, A. Cernat, J. W. Sakshaug, & R. A. Williams (Eds.), Foundation: SAGE research methods. Retrieved July 17, 2020, from: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781526421036759274
• Smith, D.E. & Griffith, A.I., 2022. Simply Institutional Ethnography: Creating a Sociology for People. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Course Description

Programme (TBC)

Day 1:

10:00 - 10:15   Introductions

10:15 - 11:30   Series of short introductory video lectures + 1 case study

11:30 - 11:45   Short break

11:45 - 12:45   Q&A on the videos and institutional ethnography in general

12:45 - 13:00   Explain afternoon task and split everyone into small groups based on research interests

13:00 - 14:00   Lunch break

14:00 - 15:00   Small group discussions divided up by discipline/area of interest; participants collectively discuss how their research projects would translate into Institutional Ethnographies, aided by a research proposal template and guiding questions - each group is facilitated by one of the three organisers

15:00 - 15:15   Short break

15:15 - 16:00   Three groups come back together to highlight key points of discussions and any final questions before explaining what will happen on Day 2 - participants will have to choose a 'text' related to their research to bring to Day 2 to analyse.

Day 2:

10:00 - 11:30   Brief introductions and 2 short case studies with Q&A

11:30 - 11:45   Short break

11:45 - 13:00   Any further questions and introduction to the text analysis methods we will use in the afternoon

13:00 - 14:00   Lunch break

14:00 - 15:00   Small groups work facilitated by three organisers in which participants using text analysis methods on their research-related 'text' (in groups or individually)

15:00 - 15:15   Short break

15:00 - 16:00   Everyone comes back together to discuss their text analysis and ask any final questions about how to do Institutional Ethnography text analysis, the overall approach, and distribution of follow-up resources. Completion of online evaluation survey.