Jura Elizabeth Maingay

One day a week I teach basic computer skills to people that come together from the municipality of Utrecht and residents of the AZC Plan Einstein in Utrecht. This course is a collaboration between plan Einstein and the refugee program “Incluusion” of Utrecht University.

As a freelance lecturer in social and political anthropology at the Vrije Hogeschool, I designed the course “Deconstructing narratives, facilitating change”. In this course, I engage with my students in discussions about dominant narratives (stories) surrounding socially and politically charged topics such as migration, racism and discrimination, climate change, activism, gender inequality and wokeism. Within this theme, we focus explicitly on marginalised narratives and perspectives and ask ourselves what they tell us about the dominant opinions and stories that prevail around this subject in our society. We examine which narratives are most familiar to us, those we grew up with and were socialised with. In a group setting, we discuss at length the insights we have gained from the teaching materials and are open to enriching and/or adjusting our perspectives.
In addition to drawing on my academic background in anthropology, I also draw a lot of inspiration for my teaching materials from a variety of other disciplines such as gender studies, postcolonial studies, sociology, political science, and migration studies. Such a diversity of perspectives and an understanding of overlapping forms of marginalisation (intersectionality) are very important to me in order to be able to work with complex social issues.

In between studying and other jobs I have been working for Lyceo for years. Through them I perform various tasks in education. Next to doing test surveillance I mostly give exam training to students at both VMBO, HAVO and VWO level.

For several years in a row, I have been in charge of developing and facilitating a three-week personal development journey in May for a group of students from the Vrije Hogeschool.

Organising travel arrangements and acting as travel guide for a three-week pilgrimage in northern Spain

Coaching during the trip, using experience- and body-oriented exercises and nature coaching
Developing teaching materials

At TrueTalk I used my organizational, communicative and academic skills in my position as Fieldwork Manager. The work that I did was very diverse: some days I would work from the office in Amsterdam, where I did preparatory and administrative work whilst on other days I would facilitate all the practical matters surrounding the fieldwork that we carry out throughout the whole country.

What I valued about this position is that it allowed me to connect my knowledge of social structures and qualitative research methods, gained through studying anthropology, to a very practical and everyday reality.

Working at Baars & Bloemhoff in the front office allowed me to gain a valuable experience that focused on communication, customer support and customer satisfaction. Working with different programs of data storage, products and customer information, required of me to learn a lot of new things and be attentive to the new environment I was in. All in all I got interesting insights in what it entails to work for and within a seizable company that pursues to have a well competitive position on the market as well as to satisfy and be of great service to its customers.