A team of Wayne State University researchers, will present a workshop on the use of anthropological methods to evaluate work processes at the Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (EPIC), Tues., Nov. 14, at the Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, Washington. The Wayne State team is made up of members from the Department of Anthropology, the Institute for Information Technology and Culture (IITC), the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering and the School of Business Administration

The conference is sponsored jointly by Microsoft and Intel, in cooperation with the American Anthropological Association’s National Association for the Practice of Anthropology. The EPIC conference was organized to promote the science, practice and application of ethnographic understanding.

Addressing the theme of “Sociality: Are we getting enough?” the team will present its workshop at 1:30 p.m. The workshop will create awareness of existing and newly forming anthropological approaches to the challenges of studying work processes. There are socially embedded obstacles in complex work settings that span organizational, geographic and societal boundaries. Workshop participants will have the opportunity to hear about Wayne State’s methods and share approaches for design and fieldwork issues and problems.

Methods employed by organizational anthropologists, like those from the Wayne State team, have attracted the attention of industrialists and business leaders who are interested in human behavior in organizational settings and the use of ethnographic research to study it. These methods have been described in such publications as US News & World Report, Investors’ Business Daily, Inc. Magazine, Forbes and Fortune Small Business.

Wayne State anthropologists work in a variety of economic, social and geographical contexts where the overall research focus is on the complexity of human cultures and their dynamic relationship to both local and global conditions. For further information regarding the Department of Anthropology at Wayne State, please contact Dr. Tom Killion, Chair, 313.577-2935 or thomas.killion@wayne.edu, or visit http://www.anthro.wayne.edu.

IITC is a multidisciplinary group of medical and organizational anthropologists, psychologists, engineers, nurses, social workers, computer experts and doctors collaborating to understand the cultural aspects of technology use. For further information regarding the IITC, please contact Dr. Allen W. Batteau, Director, 313.874.7010 or a.batteau@wayne.edu, or visit http://www.iitc.wayne.edu.

Wayne State University is a premier institution offering more than 350 academic programs through 11 schools and colleges to more than 33,000 students.