Tracademia: The Experiences of Trans People in Academia: the Joy & the Pain

Vanessa is Health and Education Manager with TENI (Transgender Equality Network Ireland). Vanessa has worked with TENI since 2010. In her role she designs and delivers transgender-related training for health care professionals throughout Ireland. She was directly responsible for creating the family support group TransParenCI in 2011, which currently supports over 280 families. Vanessa has a BA (hon) Psychology and has recently passed her PhD viva voce examination. Her research focused on grief and loss experienced by adult trans women and their families. Vanessa has worked on numerous occasions with media, and is a published author, both in media and academically. She is a member of various HSE and Tusla committees on both national and regional level. Vanessa is also a member of the World Professional Association of Transgender Healthcare (WPATH) and its European version (EPATH). She is also a proud parent.

Vanessa's PhD research investigated the experiences of adult trans women and families of adult trans women concerning grief and loss. Hermeneutic phenomenology was used as the methodology to understand the meaning that participants had in relation to grief and loss. The findings highlighted that both cohorts of participants did experience grief and loss and there was a range of loss experienced. The emergent dominant theme for both cohorts was an ambiguous loss. Trans women retrospectively experienced ambiguous loss from childhood, with the confusing and conflicting loss of the authentic gendered-self. The women also experienced a range of life-long losses regarding the ambiguous loss of loved ones in the context of gender transition. Family members experienced a range of losses on becoming aware that their loved one planned to gender transition, and there was evidence that the loss was confusing, conflicting, and in many respects unresolved. There was evidence that both sets of participants also experienced ambiguous gain and traumatic growth and they developed the resilience to help them live with the boundary ambiguity.