Much of my research in international higher education   has explored how our learning, teaching and assessment practices need to be reconceptualised and reframed to ensure a learning environment that is vibrant, reciprocal, celebratory of diversity and thus inclusive (e.g. Author, 2011).  In our interactions with students who come to the UK from another country to study, it is crucial, in my view, to ensure that, not only do they feel welcomed as people, but also that we embrace different academic traditions and educational experiences as healthy and important challenges to our dominant pedagogical theories and practices.

In a recent article about international education in Australia, the UK and the USA, Sidhu & Dall’Alba (2013) claim that it is important that we ‘critically examine the embodied subjectivities assembled for these [i.e. international] students and read these against the complexities they encounter as raced and gendered subjects’ (p.414).    Later in the same article, they argue that ‘embodiment’ raises several questions about what is meant by an ‘international education’.  These questions include:  How does learning occur? Who do international students have the opportunity to interact with in their studies?   The frustration and disappointment at the lack of interaction between students from different contexts and, indeed, students from different faiths and cultures in the same context, ( see, for example Bar-Shalom, Dfab & Rousseau, 2008) is, unfortunately, well documented in the literature (e.g. Hyland et al., 2008, Montgomery, 2010).  There can be complex reasons for this lack of interaction including cultural cliques, language, cultural differences in socialising, and institutional and degree course barriers.   Espino, Munoz & Kiyama (2010), for example, in writing about their experiences as ‘Latina doctoral recipients’ discuss how the ‘multiple strands of our identities collided with institutional cultures’ (p.804).    These doctoral researchers describe how they found support outside of their academic departments and, at the same time, muse on whether this excuses those departments from working towards creating more inclusive environments (p.814).  Their claim that their ideas are pushed aside or silenced by academics, rather than being explored together, validated and acknowledged is one that troubles and raises further questions for me.  How do we enable students/doctoral researchers to articulate such concerns that can often remain unspoken?  How do we get beyond the surface of politeness and professed celebration of diversity so that students in higher education feel able to confront their differences, learn about each other, express their fears without, as Fanghanel & Cousin (2011) suggest, inflating differences?  Given all of these apparent complexities, how can we build a strong learning community, one to which all students – and academics - feel that they belong?

As I indicated earlier, I have explored and continue to explore such questions in my research and my teaching, which, for me, are inextricably linked processes.  Recently, however, I have been reflecting on whether students want to belong in their international academic environment and, if so, what it is that they feel that they need to belong to.  This paper, therefore, will report on a research project that I am conducting in order to revisit concepts of belonging, acculturation, marginalisation and inclusivity in higher education, focusing on the experiences of doctoral researchers from outside the UK.    The research questions that I am posing are:

• What is it that students want to belong to?
• Do some long to belong (to something) and others not want to feel a sense of belonging at all? 
• If students long to belong to, for example, what they perceive and experience as a dominant academic culture, should we, as academics, be collaborating with them to challenge such hegemony? 

Bar-Shalom, Y., Dfab, K. & Rousseau, A. (2008) Sowing the seeds of change: educating for diversity in the context of teacher training at an academic college of education in Jerusalem. Intercultural Education, 14 (1), 1-14. Brown, L. (2009) International Students in England: Finding Belonging through Islam. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 29 (1), 57 – 67. Espino, M.M., Munoz, S.M. & Kiyama, J.M. (2010) Transitioning From Doctoral Study to the Academy: Theorizing Trenzas of Identity for Latina Sister Scholars. Qualitative Inquiry, 16, (10). 804-818. Fanghanel, J. & Cousin, G. (2011) Worldly Pedagogy: a Case Study on Learning across Conflict at University. Teaching in Higher Education, 17 (1), 39 – 50. Hyland, F., Trahar, S., Anderson, J. & Dickens, A. (2008) A Changing World: The Internationalisation Experiences of Staff and Students (Home and International) in UK Higher Education (ESCalate and LLAS report). Manathunga, C. (2007) Intercultural postgraduate supervision: ethnographic journeys of identity and power in D. Palfreyman & D.L. McBride (eds.) Learning and Teaching across Cultures in Higher Education. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan (pp93-113). Montgomery, C. (2010) Understanding the International Student Experience. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Riessman, C.K. (2008) Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences. Thousand Oaks, Ca: Sage. Sawhir, E., Marginson, S., Deumert, A., Nyland, C. & Ramia, G. (2008) Loneliness and International Students: An Australian Study. Journal of Studies in International Education, 12 (2), 148 -180. Scott, C. & Hobson, J. (2013) The stories we need: anthropology, philosophy, narrative and higher education research. Higher Education Research and Development, 32 (1), 17-29. Sidhu, R.K. & Dall’Alba, G. (2013) International Education and (Dis) embodied Cosmopolitans. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 44 (4), 413 -431 Author, (2011) Developing Cultural Capability in International Higher Education: a Narrative Inquiry. Abingdon: Routledge. Author (2013) Preface in Author (ed.) Contextualising Narrative Inquiry: Developing Methodological Approaches for Local Contexts (ppx1 –xx1)