The UK and Ireland Institutional Ethnography Network was founded in 2022, aiming to support the growing community of Institutional Ethnographers in the UK and Ireland. Despite the geographic focus of our in-person events and networking activities, the Network is open to anyone worldwide with an interest in Institutional Ethnography (IE).

The UK and Ireland Institutional Ethnography Network builds on an original network founded in 2014 by Órla Meadhbh Murray at the University of Edinburgh, which informally provided support and information to Institutional Ethnographers in the UK. The original network hosted a Masterclass and Q&A with Dorothy Smith as part of her University of Edinburgh Honorary Degree conferral and 50 years of the Sociology Department in 2014. In 2019 and 2020, the network launched Institutional Ethnography training workshops, delivering them at the University of Edinburgh, the University of Melbourne, and the Scottish Graduate Schools Spring into Methods summer school.

Since 2020, the UK and Ireland Institutional Ethnography Network co-founders have been providing advanced Institutional Ethnography methodology workshops online through the UK National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM), the South-West of England Doctoral Training Partnership (SWDTP), and at the Centre for Global Cooperation Research, University of Duisburg-Essen. The co-founders also work together in other ways, writing together and in the past offering formal and informal mentorship to students in need of support.