Our keenest insight and most powerful impact come when we cross boundaries, forge partnerships, and challenge conventional wisdom.
EPIC is a global community of researchers, creators, and innovators doing ethnography for impact in business and organizations.
Ethnography is a powerful approach to understanding people and catalyzing change using theory and methods from the social sciences.
Featured Collections: Essential expertise from our library
Automation
Automation shifts work, decision making and pattern finding between people and mechanized systems. Through research, strategy, and design, ethnographers engage the profound implications for society and everyday life.
Curator: Melissa Cefkin
Strategy
This collection highlights the value of ethnography for strategy and decision making, including frameworks and methods for embedding ethnographic practice deeper into an organization’s strategic practices.
Curators: Esben Ronan & Ian Dull
Sociality
No human behavior exists in isolation. Ethnographers illuminate the complex social systems that connect people, products and services, organizations, and research endeavors themselves.
Curator: John W. Sherry
Annual Conference
EPIC2023 Friction
LEARNING & NETWORKING WEEK: SEPT 18–22
MAIN PROGRAM: OCT 22–25
Our keenest insights and most powerful impact come when we cross boundaries, forge partnerships, and challenge conventional wisdom. Join the premier global conference on ethnography in business and organizations:
EPIC Course | Oct 16 – Nov 13
Leveraging Organizational Culture for Impact
Instructor: John Curran, PhD
Learn how to decode and leverage organizational culture to work more effectively with teams, stakeholders, and clients.
EPIC Course | Nov 1 – Dec 13
Semiotics
Instructors: Cato Hunt & James Woodhead
Learn and apply semiotic techniques for applications across business strategy, innovation, design, communication & brand activation.
Job Board
Full-time and contract opportunities posted by organizations looking for applicants in the EPIC community.
Always insightful, immediately applicable, and delightfully provocative, EPIC gives us the knowledge and networks we need to be strong voices for people
Ovetta Sampson
Director of UX – Core ML, Google
EPIC is one of the most welcoming and inspiring professional communities out there. Curious folks asking big, hard questions and using the power of ethnography to make sense of a fast-changing world while building a supportive network.
Maria Lucia Vidart-Delgado
Senior Safety Researcher, Reddit
EPIC Member Benefits
Join a global community of people doing ethnography for impact in business, organizations and communities.
Learning & Networking Week
40+ workshops, seminars, and networking events are FREE for EPIC Members! Member-only short courses are just $100.
Year-round Events
Explore methods and practices, theory, career development, and current topics affecting our work and organizations. Online talks and seminars are FREE for EPIC Members, who can also propose, organize, and present sessions.
Member Directory
Coming soon! The EPIC community is a famously warm, generous group, and we will have a new tool for creating and sustaining networks.
Premium Video
Access our collection of tutorials and our latest annual conferences on demand.
Featured Articles & Video
Case Study
How a Government Organization Embraced Ethnographic Methods for Service Resilience
Mithula Naik & Colin MacArthur
Tutorial
From Research to Action: Leading Teams through Synthesis
Marta Cuciurean-Zapan
Keynote
AI Among Us: Agency in a World of Cameras and Recognition Systems
ken anderson et al.
Perspective
10 Things You Should Know about Moving from Academia to Industry
Nadine Levin
Paper
Developing and Integrating Machine Learning in Clinical Care
Madeleine Clare Elish
Keynote
Racist by Design: Why We Need a New Economic System for the 21st Century
Carolyn Rouse