Mapping for Change

Institutional Ethnography with Susan Marie Turner, PhD



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Susan Marie Turner works with individuals and groups in a collaborative mapping process to explore, from their experiences, where issues emerge that are of concern for them in their everyday lives. Learning and mapping connected work processes and practices lays the ground for identifying sites for change. It produces an in-common big picture and working knowledge of institutional work that is the foundation for building effective change.

New Ways of Seeing

Delve into large scale institutional organization together by starting with where people are and with what they do.

Concrete Perspective

Make institutional action concrete by learning people's work and how it's coordinated with others'

Interactive & Collaborative

Conversational approach to learn from and with people and make fresh discoveries

Track institutional work processes

Make complex work and institutional action visible quickly.


Past Work Training Materials

I'm delighted Susan Marie Turner's important mapping of institutional sequences of action becomes available to be learned and practised. I first encountered her remarkable invention in her doctoral dissertation when she drew an extended map of a complex municipal decision-making on a proposal to develop a natural ravine for housing. Since then I have seen it come into play in many useful ways and while I have joined with her in workshops in which she has used it, I have been longing for a way it can be learned as a practice for institutional ethnographers. And here it is.

— Dorothy Smith, Founder of Institutional Ethnography, University of Victoria, Canada

Working with Susan built a foundation of deep respect, understanding, openness and honesty. Upon first meeting, we had a tough conversation on language and difference. Susan listened to our expert knowledge and readily agreed the work for Haudenosaunee people and project documents will be from our worldview vs. from the settler lens. We worked closely, with many straightforward and sensitive conversations. As a result of the project, significant outcomes were achieved. The most important is the first funded Sexual Violence Healing Centre on a First Nations Territory in Ontario.

Nya:weh Susan for being a trusted ally and always being on the journey of decolonization.

— Julia Bomberry, MSW, Manager of Therapeutic Services, Ganohkwasra Family Assault Support Services, Six Nations of the Grand River Territory

Training and Consultation for Individuals and Groups

Find out if Institutional Ethnography will work for you and your group - book a constulation with Susan Marie Turner