Feminist Ways of Knowing: From Institutional Ethnography to Ethnography in Practice [Event Invitation]
Join us for engaging online conversations with Dr Órla Meadhbh Murray and Dr Serena Saligari on feminist, critical, and decolonial methodological approaches.
Date: Tuesday, 13 January 2026
Time: 1:00 – 3:00pm (GMT)
Sign-Up Link - https://forms.gle/dBt9JLbtpLo1YDYE6
This event is organised as part of the JustGESI XChange series, which aims to foster knowledge sharing and collective learning. This session will feature:
Book Discussion with Dr Órla Meadhbh Murray
University Audit Cultures and Feminist Praxis: An Institutional Ethnography (2025)
How do audit cultures shape academic life?
Where does power reside?
How can we resist, rewrite, or subvert institutional logics?
Join us for an engaging discussion as Dr Órla Meadhbh Murray (Northumbria University) introduces their powerful new monograph. Drawing on five years of Institutional Ethnography across UK universities, Órla explores how ruling relations are organised through audit cultures and how these processes shape academic practices.
This session offers:
A feminist, abolitionist reading of the neoliberal university
Insights into Institutional Ethnography as a research strategy
An invitation to collective re-reading and re-writing of institutional logics
About the speaker:
Dr Órla Meadhbh Murray (she/they) is an Assistant Professor of Criminology & Sociology at Northumbria University and a Fellow at the Institute for Medical Humanities, Durham University. They are the co‑founder of the Institutional Ethnography Network and regularly run Institutional Ethnography methodology workshops. Her areas of interest include queer feminist sociology of knowledge production, inequalities in higher education and imposter syndrome. Their new project focuses on gut health and mental health.
Ethnography in Practice with Dr Serena Saligari
What does doing ethnography really mean?
How do we navigate positionality, uncertainty, and relational demands?
Drawing on her doctoral fieldwork in Langas, Kenya, Dr Serena Saligari (Loughborough University) reflects on the everyday work of ethnography - from pandemic‑era challenges to the politics of access, trust, and collaboration. She highlights how participatory methods can deepen insights and shape grounded understandings of energy transitions.
This session offers:
Reflexive insights into fieldwork under COVID‑19
Navigating whiteness, Western positionality, and ethics
Ethnography for socially just energy transitions
About the speaker:
Dr Serena Saligari is a social anthropologist with over five years’ experience conducting ethnographic and qualitative research on the politics and practices of energy transitions for health and gender equality in Sub-Saharan Africa. She is currently a Research Associate at Loughborough University and leads Work Package 1 of the UKRI Ayrton Challenge funded JustGESI project.
