Moving to a new city means creating new social networks. When I arrived in Wellington in early 2013 to start my doctoral studies at Victoria University, I knew only a handful of people whom I’d met during my student exchange a few years earlier.
Unfortunately, most of the people I got to know during those months were exchange students themselves, which meant that they sooner or later had to move back to their home countries. However, knowing only a few people goes a long way in a small city like Wellington where everyone knows everyone.
Snowball Networks
One of the main techniques I adopted to get in touch with different local musicians was what is known in the Social Sciences as “snowball sampling”. This means that the researcher begins with a small number of known individuals from a specific group and expands the sample by asking those participants to identify other potential subjects. Thus the sample group gathers layers and momentum like a rolling snowball. During my very first weeks in Wellington I met Nick, a well-known and well-connected local musician and a PhD candidate in musicology. We talked about his research on New Zealand’s jazz scene and my research on music and place, and he got me in touch with several local musicians through Facebook. He introduced me, and asked them if they were interested in taking part in my project – that was when the (snow) ball started rolling.