Overview: OSEA Field Study Abroad Trainning Programs
OSEA offers intensive, on-site fieldwork training in ethnography, teaching English as a Second Language, and intensive Maya language learning. Different programs are available to suit the needs and interests of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as professionals and other persons who are not students who have a need to develop new skills in interdisciplinary research methodologies. The OSEA training programs are designed to be flexible while retaining a structure for hands-on, interactive learning for small groups. OSEA Ethnography Field School and Teaching English Service Learning include introduction to Maya for fieldwork and Spanish refresher coursework. All programs include Educational Excursions within the Yucatán and Field Trips to Chichén Itzá.

OSEA Programs currently being offered:
7-Day Intensive Spanish Immersion Course
Heritage Ethnography Field School
Maya Immersion Language Field School
SELT Teaching English Service Language

We are looking for highly motivated, creative, and flexible persons with a variety of skills, experience, training, and interest not just in cultural anthropology and ethnography, but in any one or more of: photography, video, visual anthropology, theatre arts, staging design, installation, invisible theatre, performance art, studio art, Maya cultures, México and Latin America, Indigenous peoples, history, ethnohistory, art history, epigraphy, archeology, cultural studies, writing, journalism, tourism, museum studies, ESL, multicultural education, critical pedagogy, anthropology of education. This program is appropriate for undergraduate and graduate students of all levels as well as persons who are not currently in enrolled in a degree granting program.

Do You Want to Learn About:
What is Study Abroad and Field Study?
What is Ethnography?
What is Heritage?

Learn About Previous OSEA Field School Programs (below)

OSEA Programs Include Language Study: Maya and Spanish
The OSEA Ethnography Field School or ethnography training programs begin with intensive Spanish and Maya language courses that rely upon "hands-on learning” pedagogies. This first phase of the program includes seminars in Cultural Anthropology and Ethnography. In a second phase of the program, students then conduct their own independent research projects that they have designed in close supervision with OSEA staff. The independent research projects are conducted in Pisté or in a nearby Maya community and require communicative proficiency in Spanish.

During the independent research, the students gather together on a weekly basis in Pisté for a Workshop in Fieldwork. These allow students to share, exchange, reflect, evaluate, and compare their own and their colleagues research activities. Students are encouraged to develop independent thinking, autonomy, self-reliance and integrity.

The Intensive Maya Language Immersion Program begins and ends learning Maya! Students will benefit from prior coursework in Spanish, although this is not required for acceptance into the program. In the Maya program students can be provided basic conversational Spanish on an ad hoc basis as means to help them learn Maya.

The SELT Teaching English Service Learning Program requires students to have basic conversational proficiency in Spanish to be able to teach. Participants learn basic Maya in the course of the program as part of their the ethnographic and pedagogical process of teaching English to the community. See Program description for more details.

OSEA Programs Include Educational Excursions and Culture Field Trips
Each of the training programs include educational trips to major sites of attraction. In the January Programs, students attend major religious holidays and visit archaeological sites. The semester program includes a group trip to the Mexican Caribbean as well as a week of spring break.

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Learn About Previous OSEA Field School Programs

Who Should Consider OSEA Programs?
We are looking for highly motivated, creative, and flexible persons with a variety of skills, experience, training, and interest.

Successful participants in OSEA Ethnographic Training Programs are persons who study or have significant experience in cultural anthropology, photography, video, visual anthropology, theatre arts, staging design, installation, invisible theatre, performance art, studio art, Maya cultures, México and Latin America, Indigenous peoples, history, ethnohistory, art history, epigraphy, archeology, cultural studies, writing, journalism, tourism, museum studies, ESL, multicultural education, critical pedagogy, anthropology of education and the anthropology of art, medical anthropology.

Our programs are appropriate for undergraduate and graduate students of all levels as well as persons who have just completed a degree and seek additional fieldwork experience and training before continuing on to a graduate degree program or to a professional position

Training with OSEA provides you tools, understandings & methods on which you will continue to rely long into the future


OSEA Programs (1997-2008)
Our History
OSEA and its antecedent organization, the Field School in Experimental Ethnography, have provided graduate and undergraduate students a unique learning experience since 1997. Through our programs we have and continue to provide students with an invaluable, on-site, hands-on interactive training in research methods and ethnographic fieldwork. Successful students have used their training and experience from OSEA and the Field School in Experimental Ethnography to go on to graduate programs at Stanford, Rice University, Michigan, the New School. Their experiences have helped them develop new or accelerated career paths in TESL, the anthropology of education, visual anthropology, and other fields. Click here to learn more about OSEA History, Student Success, and On-Going Research Endeavors

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Previous OSEA Programs (2003-2008)
Winter Study Abroad Program (2005)

MIRA - Multimedia Interdisciplinary Research in Anthropology

Spring Writer’s Workshop (2004)
The Ethnography Writer’s Workshop is not a fieldwork based program. The Workshop is an intensive period of writing on one’s own projects within an atmosphere of collaborative support, constructive commentary, intellectual focus created by the OSEA staff and the other participants who are similarly engaged in their own writing. The Workshop is ideal for any culture-focused writer seeking to complete a journal article, revise a book, write a dissertation or thesis, or prepare a research proposal or report.