Institutional ethnography and the accessibility of University spaces

Institutional Ethnography (IE) was a term first used by Dorothy E. Smith to describe the manner in which institutions intersect with people and their lives through policy, practice and procedure. Whilst rooted in feminist theory, this participatory workshop will explore how we can use IE to scrutinise the lived experiences of marginalised people in our Universities and ask ourselves if we are truly liberating people in the day to day experiences they have with us. Through a range of examples, the workshop will explore through an IE lens the impact that institutions can have on a persons before they ever start to obviously interact with the actors in the space and consider how the body politic impacts the body corporeal in its actions.