Given its close links to student success, universities are heavily invested in how they can positively influence their students' sense of belonging. One approach to this is through social belonging interventions, where universities attempt to develop student agency. This study takes a quasi-experimental approach by evaluating the impact of a newly…

Purpose: An important facet of student's sense of belonging is students' relationships with, and time spent in, the university campus. The purpose of this paper is to explore the notion that access to campus "green space", including parks, fields and gardens, may bolster students' sense of belonging, improve well-being feelings and…

University campuses are important places of cultural, intellectual, and economic capital, making significant contributions to their surrounding communities. As institutions seek to navigate changing expectations for university teaching, learning, research and impact, an exploration of the interface of individual experience and the campus…

While many Vietnamese students are reported to study abroad, the experiences of home-making among Vietnamese returning students are paid scant attention to in current research on Vietnamese international student mobility. Following a Heideggerian perspective on building and dwelling at home, this study explores the sense-making of home through…

This paper explores how storying can be used to uncover experiences of student belonging throughout their time in Higher Education. It adopts a framing of belonging that is fluid and which recognises shifting notions of belonging over time. A focus on storying is particularly useful for understanding belonging as it enables university staff to…

Background: Student transition to university can be a challenging time. Research suggests that providing space for student reflection and goal setting may facilitate this period of transition. Objective: I describe the "Postcard to my Graduating Self Project," in which psychology students were invited to write postcards to their future…

In this article, we explore the concept of belonging and its utility as a means for understanding academics' experiences of working in the academy. Transformative changes have reorientated academic work in recent years and continue to do so as we grapple with what it means to work and live in a post-digital, post-covid, world. We engage a…

Schools reflect society and societies reflect the schooling of their citizens. Amidst the COVID Pandemic, the failures of many nations to respond effectively and in an equitable manner have been on display for the world. The authors highlight the failure of neoliberal educational policies to create compassionate societies and propose a radical…

Following the gradual post-COVID-19 return of international student flows, it is important to examine how higher education institutions and international students are reacting to their new environment and how they relate to each other. Central to this relationship is the concept of "belonging"; what it means for international students,…

This paper considers the topic of student wellbeing using the lens of a different type of support mechanism -- 'dog borrowing' -- which builds on prior research about emotion work and human-animal interactions but in the context of student transitions and pastoral care in higher education. This novel study was about the experiences of students…

Searching for belonging is the transformative individual process of developing connections, making homes and hoping in the ecologies of a community. Belongingness influences academic performance, confidence and well-being. Therefore, understanding how students embody and search for belongingness in their higher education experience provides…

Context: This study, underpinned by Critical Realism, re-analysed interview data acquired to examine the views and experiences of four stakeholder groups involved in the delivery of employer-sponsored pre-registration nursing programmes offered by a UK university in which all students already held an appointment as a non-registrant carer and who…

The aim of this paper is to foreground network analysis as a statistical lens through which higher education institutions can articulate their own process of striving for teaching excellence, and how it is constituted in their own contexts. The paper offers an approach to analysis that extends the frontiers of methodologies in 'measurement' of…

The paper outlines the functioning of Hungarian weekend schools in the United Kingdom, which are key institutions in emerging diaspora communities. The paper interprets Hungarian weekend schools in two paradigms: it approaches them as diaspora institutions, and also as Anglo-Saxon supplementary schools. One of the paper's main conclusions is that,…

Over the past decade, there has been an increase in government initiatives to widen Higher Education (HE) participation in the UK. Consequently, various Further Education Colleges (FECs) provide HE in order to meet that drive. In 2021, 162 FECs provided HE undergraduate degrees, yet little research has been focused on HE lecturers and their…