Feminist Ways of Knowing: From Institutional Ethnography to Ethnography in Practice

JUSTGESI XChange Presents

Feminist Ways of Knowing: From Institutional Ethnography to Ethnography in Practice

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

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. Órla’s research spans queer feminist sociology of knowledge production, inequalities in higher education, and imposter syndrome. Their new project focuses on gut health and mental health.

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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 specialising in energy, gender, and health 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.