The Wellbeing Turn: The ‘New’ International Student Experience And Why Community and Connectivity Matter
COVID-19 ruptured the international student experience not only in Australia but elsewhere. International students worldwide found their lives and futures suspended while navigating an international education reality which took them almost exclusively from the classroom and freely socialising with others, to one where physical isolation became commonplace. In this environment however, the digital became the only avenue which facilitated any form of engagement with anyone. While international student mobility (ISM) seems to be recovering with student numbers increasing in key international education hubs, has the international student experience now pivoted into something else? In this keynote I reflect on various projects I have worked on in the past decade about the everyday lives of international students in both the real and digital environments. A key finding from this work is that international students organically create community as a way of coping with life in an overseas country. Here I consider ways in which we can learn from international students when creating wellbeing strategies which promote community and connectivity both offline and online.
Professor Catherine Gomes
Catherine (Cat) is a Professor in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University. She is internationally recognised for her conceptual work on transient migration and for her research on international student transition and wellbeing. Of particular relevance to the conference theme is her most recent book ‘Parallel Societies of International Students in Australia: Connections, Disconnections and a Global Pandemic’ for which she won the A.Noam Chomsky Global Connections Shining Star Award for Achievement in Research. Cat also published a Special Issue – The Digitization of International Education – in the Journal of Studies of International Education.
Cat’s research has appeared in numerous journals (e.g., Higher Education Research & Development, Current Sociology, Journal of Youth Studies, Migration Studies, International Journal of Cultural Studies, Journal of International Students, Review of Policy Research, Asian Ethnicity). She is also editor of the Media, Culture and Communication in Migrant Societies book series (Amsterdam University Press) and founding editor of Transitions: Journal of Transient Migration (Intellect Books).
Cat has held Visiting Research Fellowships at the Singapore Management University, Nanyang Technological University and Universiti Brunei Darussalam. She has received funding for her research from Australian Digital Health Agency, Study Melbourne, National Foundation for Australia-China Relations (DFAT), Universities Australia, Nanyang Technological University (CoHASS Incentive Grant Scheme), Singapore’s Ministry of Education AcRF Tier 1 grant), to name a few. Cat was also a recipient of an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher (DECRA) in 2013-2016.