{"id":800,"date":"2015-07-21T10:32:06","date_gmt":"2015-07-21T10:32:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.blogs.soton.ac.uk\/ethnographicencounters\/?p=800"},"modified":"2015-07-21T10:32:06","modified_gmt":"2015-07-21T10:32:06","slug":"year-abroad-testimony-claire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/test-media\/2015\/07\/21\/year-abroad-testimony-claire\/","title":{"rendered":"Year Abroad Testimony: Claire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-808 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/test-media\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/sites\/52\/2015\/07\/10506860_10152622000440446_7962919325290101258_o-267x300.jpg\" alt=\"10506860_10152622000440446_7962919325290101258_o\" width=\"249\" height=\"280\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">My name is Claire St John Eve and I am currently working as a project intern on the\u00a0Ethnographic Encounters Project <!--more-->, creating resources for University of Southampton students and for this website, and helping to organise our workshop &amp; conference on 4<sup>th<\/sup> November.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">For my year abroad I lived with a family in a tiny village called Pe\u00f1aflor near Zaragoza, Spain and worked as an English language Assistant in Huesca.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">My YARP title was \u201cHow do trans* Spaniards construct national identities in contemporary Spain?\u201d It was based on one-to-one interviews with four individuals who identified as trans*, which were conducted throughout the year. I chose to study this particular group because I was (and still am!) interested in issues of gender identity, and I also wanted to conduct research which would give people from an under-represented group a voice.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The main challenges I faced <a href=\"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/test-media\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/sites\/52\/2015\/07\/zaragoza.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"  wp-image-803 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/test-media\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/sites\/52\/2015\/07\/zaragoza-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"zaragoza\" width=\"262\" height=\"199\" \/><\/a>were finding participants \u2013 a few interviews were cancelled along the way which was quite demotivating, and I didn\u2019t end up with as much data as I would have liked: I even took a trip to Granada once because someone who lived there was willing to meet me, but they cancelled at the last minute! So the big piece of advice I would give to anyone conducting a similar type of research would be to take every opportunity to meet with participants, even when you\u2019re not really feeling up to it. I found out that relationships with participants can be very tenuous and you have to be quite persistent in order to establish contact with people!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The most positive experience I had during my project was taking part in Zaragoza\u2019s transgender group and<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"  wp-image-806 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/test-media\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/sites\/52\/2015\/07\/transgenero-300x209.png\" alt=\"transgenero\" width=\"278\" height=\"194\" \/> being able to meet some amazing people with such interesting stories as part of my research. It gave me a chance to meet locals and I definitely felt a more like part of the city because of it. I definitely felt much more confident in my Spanish language abilities at the end of my year abroad.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">I would really encourage anyone who is thinking about ethnographic research to consider studying an unfamiliar group or environment \u2013 I found it challenging to step out of my comfort zone, but it was so worth it! I was so glad to have been able to conduct research which allowed me to meet and work with new people, practise my Spanish and have completely new experiences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My name is Claire St John Eve and I am currently working as a project intern on the\u00a0Ethnographic Encounters Project<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[345],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-year-abroad-testimonies-how-to-ethnography"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/test-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/test-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/test-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/test-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/test-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/test-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/test-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/test-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/test-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}