Yes / Most studies investigated the effectiveness of virtual reality (VR) for healthcare and educational purposes, but little is known on the effectiveness of VR in social interaction. Our aim was to examine whether VR would be similar to in-person interaction in reducing loneliness. A total of 73 participants participated in this study. They were randomly assigned to in-person or VR condition and interacted for 15 minutes about a tourist landmark. Participants completed a set of questions that measured belonging – acceptance and exclusion, positive and negative affect, wellbeing, trust, and mood before and after the interaction. Results showed that in both conditions, loneliness was significantly lower, with higher wellbeing, higher positive and lower negative affect, feeling happier and had more fun post task. Trust was higher in the VR condition post task but not for in-person. Our regression analyses showed that having higher wellbeing was a significant predictor in reducing loneliness for in-person condition and that being older and higher belonging – acceptance were significant predictors on feeling lonelier for the VR condition. In sum, our results demonstrated some success in reducing loneliness in VR but may not be sufficient to develop lasting friendship. / The full-text of this article will be released for public view at the end of the publisher embargo on 07 Nov 2024.

My thesis explores the profound impact of contemporary residential architecture on social interaction and a sense of belonging among dwellers. Based on personal experiences in the United States, a critical examination reveals a prevailing trend towards isolation within modern living spaces, fostering disconnection and loneliness. As an architect, I have tried to investigate the spatial and architectural barriers that hinder social cohesion, emphasizing the vital role of "pauses" in facilitating human interaction and community engagement within built environments. Drawing inspiration from historical precedents and vibrant urban settings like the North End in Boston and plazas in Paris, this study advocates for a transformative approach to residential design. By integrating elements reminiscent of lively streets into vertical housing projects, the aim is to create opportunities for spontaneous human interactions. The research delves into specific examples, such as the Foxridge apartments in Blacksburg, to identify and address architectural deficiencies that inhibit verbal and non-verbal communication. Through innovative design interventions and strategic placement of communal spaces, my thesis proposes a paradigm shift towards architecture that fosters community bonds and enriches daily life experiences. It underscores the inherent potential of architecture to bridge societal divides and counterbalance the pervasive trend towards digital engagement, promoting holistic well-being through meaningful human connections. Ultimately, my thesis advocates for a human-centric architectural ethos, envisioning spaces that not only accommodate but actively cultivate a sense of belonging and social connectivity. / Master of Architecture / As Frank Lloyd Wright has told, "We create our buildings and then they create us. Likewise we construct our circle of friends and our communities and then they construct us." Humans are social beings and we have an inert need for social connections and interactions with other humans and nature. We crave the warmth of human connection, the solace of shared laughter, and the embrace of understanding souls. Lack of social interactions and sense of belonging can lead to social isolation and loneliness, and can have really detrimental effects on one's physical and mental health and also on a society as a whole. As Patricia Churchland has told "We long to belong, and belonging and caring anchors our sense of place in the universe." Architecture of the community has the potential or obligation to create a sense of community and belonging by providing opportunities for human interactions, celebrating gathering spaces and visual communication within the community. In the midst of the urban sprawl, the need for community is palpable, like a silent cry echoing through the concrete jungle. With the more vertical the residential units get the social interactions are almost completely lost as it is only double loaded corridors with houses on either sides with uncomfortable, awkward to almost zero human interactions. Even in vertical living we need to keep in mind that those beautiful views from the 12th floor have no value if you are still feeling socially isolated. My thesis focuses on tackling loneliness through the Built Environment and understanding what are the architecture barriers of social interaction. Through my thesis I have explored different strategies developed through my research to foster the sense of community and belonging. I am exploring these ideas in the context of Washington D.C. which is claimed to be one of the loneliest cities in the United States.

No, she is not my mom, not my aunt, we are not family. Yes, we do look alike, we do live in the same neighborhood, we smell the same coffee beans each morning, and we share the same zip code. The only difference between us is I do have an actual address here, she does not. Yes, she must have lived here much longer than me, she has a history in this town, a lot of the people would recognize her smiling spirit right away, yet she only occupies a corner in a street near a coffee shop most of the year. Everyone knows that space is hers, except the legal papers. Where are you from? The question may seem so simple, but regardless of how many times I am asked the answer has never been so easy for me each time I am asked, and I am asked very often. Belonging, identity, countries, tribes, bloodlines and borders are things that confuse me a lot, and for that I decided to do my thesis about them, trying to find an answer to a simple question, in a very complicated universe. I chose to study these matters through a transitional program, in a transforming neighborhood and for users who are in their most confused age; an international 6 boarding school in Dupont circle. / Master of Architecture

An alarmingly high level of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) college students in the United States end up dropping out of secondary education institutions. One important predictor of academic success and retention at the secondary level is student sense of school belonging. This thesis explores NHPI college students' perceptions of how their university instructors foster or undermine their sense of school belonging. A snowball sample of 97 NHPI students participated in 18 focus groups that included students from various islands and ethnicities in Oceania who were attending one U.S. university in the Pacific Rim. Focus group data were transcribed and analyzed using a thematic analytic approach. Open coding was conducted to investigate ways that NHPI participants talked about how their instructors did or did not help them feel a sense of belonging at the university. Four main findings emerged from this study. First, NHPI students were able to articulate ways their instructors fostered or undermined school belonging, highlighting the importance of instructors for fostering school belonging. Second, responses reveal that NHPI students feel a sense of school belonging when instructors show care and build bridges for academic success. NHPI students also noted why these were so important for them, given their cultural backgrounds and experiences. Conversely, when instructors failed to show care or build bridges, NHPI students shared how directly and devastatingly their sense of school belonging was undermined. Third, many NHPI students shared the positive and negative impacts of these school belonging experiences as pertaining to academic self-efficacy, motivation, and persistence. Finally, NHPI students articulated how important it was for them to have instructors who chose to attend to the student-teacher relationship and were able to provide cultural representation within their classrooms. There are several implications from this study for university instructors who work with NHPI students. First, the teacher-student relationship really matters for these students and instructors must develop relationships with their NHPI students in meaningful ways. Second, instructors should seek to create safe spaces for their NHPI students to speak and share. Third, instructors need to be explicit in their instruction and build the bridges for academic success that NHPI students cannot build for themselves. Overall, instructors should be made aware that they really matter for fostering or undermining NHPI students' experiences of school belonging in the college or university setting.

When heavy metal fans traverse through their everyday life, they are faced with countless opportunities to engage in social interactions with others. Such interactions question, establish, and strengthen fans’ heavy metal identities whilst providing them with a sense of community and belonging through engaging with others who also share a preference for heavy metal music. This thesis is built on a qualitative research approach, complimented by an insider and ethnographic orientation in order to explore identity expression, the feeling of belonging and community, everyday life processes, and the role of heavy metal music in the everyday life of heavy metal fans. Through social interactions based on shared musical preference, heavy metal fans are able to meaningfully engage with others through which communal affiliations are strengthened and reinforced. Despite mainstream, and largely negative attitudes towards heavy metal, the music provides a safety net for listeners and is a driving force in their experience of the reciprocal relationship between personal identity and group membership and community. Due to the deep connection listeners have with heavy metal, the music becomes something which fans are able to call theirs alone.

This study explores the role of language in constructing identity and promoting belonging for seventeen Fijian college students at one U.S. based university in the Pacific Rim. Focus group interviews were analyzed for how students described the role that language played in constructing student identity and mediating connection. Analysis was grounded in post-structural perspectives of identity alongside vā – the Oceanic notion that encompasses identity and belonging. Students described themes of native language proficiency in reinforcing kinship relationships and in participating in cultural traditions and practices. They also expressed other ways of maintaining vā without proficiency in their native languages. Other students noted the affordances of speaking English to participating in global economies and global cultures, including schooling at the university. Implications highlight the need for educational policies, practices, and pedagogies that empower Fijian students to be successful in academic and public spaces, while helping them maintain connection to their ethnic communities and identities—to promote belonging, and to maintain their positions in the vā.

Formerly incarcerated students comprise a population that has been largely overlooked, when it comes to the recognition of their higher education promise and potential (Strayhorn et al., 2013; U.S. Department of Education, 2021). This lack of recognition contributes to the perpetuation of race- and class-based inequities and discounts the talents and potential of a multitude of individuals. In order to advance social justice and equity for this marginalized group, further exploration of their experiences with higher education is warranted. This exploration is increasingly timely, as the reinstatement of Pell eligibility for incarcerated students may place many more incarcerated individuals on a trajectory to continue pursuing their degrees at higher education institutions located outside of prison walls post-release. Although much research has been done on higher education courses offered in prison, relatively little is known about the experiences of formerly incarcerated students as they pursue higher education after prison release (Donaldson & Viera, 2021; Livingston & Miller, 2014; McTier et al., 2020b; Strayhorn et al., 2013).This qualitative study used the theoretical framework of social capital to explore the experiences of formerly incarcerated students as they have transitioned out of prison and into on-campus learning at institutions of higher education. The study was primarily aimed at obtaining a better understanding of the barriers and supports that formerly incarcerated students experience as they pursue higher education, focusing specifically on the ways in which they are able to cultivate a sense of belonging. Additionally, the study explored the motivations behind formerly incarcerated students’ decisions to continue pursuing higher education after their release from prison as well as their expectations for the future post-graduation. Data were collected through surveys, semi-structured, in-depth interviews with formerly incarcerated undergraduate and graduate students, and publicly accessible articles and video featuring the higher education experiences of formerly incarcerated students. Findings revealed that formerly incarcerated students’ decisions to continue higher education after prison were influenced by several factors, including personal transformations that led to the revaluation of higher education and the desire for better professional prospects after prison. Additionally, the decision to continue higher education was influenced by the acquisition of meaningful social capital that occurred through in-prison education. Connections to faculty members and fellow students made the task of earning a college degree on campus seem more attainable. Pertaining to barriers to experiencing a sense of belonging on campus, students who were formerly incarcerated dealt with culture shock during their transition from prison to on-campus learning; concerns over being stigmatized and perceived negatively by others; limitations and restrictions imposed on them by the halfway houses in which many of them lived; and a lack of shared experience with others on campus. Conversely, formerly incarcerated students found support and a sense of belonging in the context of the program in which they were involved, which offered them a sense of family and access to multi-faceted support services. Positive relationships with faculty also facilitated the cultivation of a sense of belonging among formerly incarcerated students, as did instances where they were able to leverage their life experiences in order to educate, inform, and mentor others on campus. Notably, the program provided various resources and opportunities to form meaningful connections with others, including other formerly incarcerated students, program staff, and faculty connected to the program. In this way, social capital acquisition—in the form of meaningful and supportive relationships fostered through the program—was most instrumental in facilitating a sense of belonging within their institution of higher education. Findings also showed that the higher education experiences of formerly incarcerated students had an overall positive effect on their perceptions of post-graduation opportunities. Through their higher education experiences, and more specifically through their time in the RISE-UP [a pseudonym] program, participants expanded their perspective on what they thought possible for themselves and gained confidence that their goals for the future were attainable. The program facilitated widespread networking and other opportunities for students, which led them to acquire a great deal of social capital. This social capital they acquired was most important in shaping their positive expectations for their post-graduation futures. As formerly incarcerated students are not a homogenous group, findings differed slightly based on factors such as gender, age, race/ethnicity, and campus attended. Findings of the current study show that in higher education spaces formerly incarcerated students have much to contribute but often face considerable barriers, particularly when it comes to establishing a sense of belonging. The findings have many important implications and suggest that by adopting certain policies and practices universities, administration, and faculty could help to better meet the needs of formerly incarcerated students and thereby increase their chances of academic, professional, and personal success. Future research should be conducted to further understand the experiences of diverse groups of formerly incarcerated students situated in various higher contexts. / Policy, Organizational and Leadership Studies

This dissertation explores how internationally educated youth in contemporary Egypt negotiate issues of national identity, postcoloniality and belonging while participating in globalizing class practices. Based on fourteen months of ethnographic research in and around for-profit international schools in Cairo, it focuses on how this privileged youth group constructed, experienced and enacted belonging at the intersection between class and nation. I argue that internationally educated Egyptians were caught in a cultural bind between competing constructions of class and national belonging. On the one hand, globally-oriented socialization practices and international education reproduced a historically-specific and colonially-inspired configuration of social distinction that linked elite belonging to a cosmopolitan-inflected distance from local culture. On the other hand, these markers of elite belonging excluded internationally educated youth from a materially embodied conception of Egyptianness that tied national belonging to essentialist constructions of local culture and identity. I suggest that the tension between class and national belonging expressed a single dialectical process that was rooted in colonial binary conceptualizations of culture and difference, which split ‘elite’ and ‘local’ into mutually exclusive cultural and symbolic repertoires. My analysis challenges dominant theoretical approaches that conflate the reproduction of class and nation by exposing the educational, gendered and linguistic gaps between class and national culture in contemporary Egypt. I present a bottom-up approach to understanding national attachment that highlights the embodied and moral labor that goes into the production of local selfhood in a transnational postcolonial setting. This approach also shows the differential gendered dynamics of class and national reproduction. The burden of maintaining cosmopolitan-inflected class boundaries falls squarely on the girls while boys are expected to embody the nationally-inflected skills and dispositions necessary for personal and professional trajectories that transcend class boundaries. In telling this story, I expose the sociohistorical dynamic by which colonial/postcolonial categories are reconfigured through globally-oriented class practices and highlight the unexpected ways that neoliberal globalism can become the incubator for intensely and irreducibly local gender and cultural norms.

No description available.

In February 2022 Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started the war that would lead to the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II. In response to the war, SWAN, the Swedish Artists Residency Network, initiated the project Emergency residencies. During 2022, the network’s artist residencies opened up to provide safety for Ukrainian artists fleeing the war. Through an ethnographic case study and in-depth interviews, this thesis explores the experiences of four Ukrainian musicians in times of war and displacement, that took part of the Emergency residencies. It also investigates the function of SWAN’s Emergency residencies for musicians facing forced migration. The purpose is to shed light on the experience of musicians in a refugee position and the residency as a space that may contribute to uphold music-making and musical labour for refugee artists.   This thesis uses a transdisciplinary approach. It draws on notions of music as an emotional resource, music becoming political, and theoretical concepts regarding identity, belonging, and detachment, as well as translocality and transcultural capital. SWAN’s Emergency residencies is shown to provide several benefits for musicians displaced during Russia’s war on Ukraine. It includes the contribution of economic resources, opportunities for artistic practice and development, and promotion of cultural understanding and social inclusion. It also suggests that typical benefits provided by artist residencies gain added value for artists experiencing war and displacement, as it answers to losses typically experienced in forced migration. The war and refugee position are embedded in the daily experience of musicians facing war and displacement. This thesis suggests that musicians can use various strategies to either enforce, dismiss, expand or change the view of their prescribed identity in relation to the war and the refugee position. A Ukrainian identity is enhanced to show pride of their country, create awareness of Ukraine’s situation or foster a sense of belonging. Music can also be used to detach from positions and preconceptions surrounding such labels and connections, either through performing other identities or releasing from all categories. Furthermore, music and music-making can act as an emotional resource that helps regulate emotions or become a vehicle for political mobilisation and support for Ukraine. The politicisation of music is also actualised by the refugee position in itself and public perceptions of such positions. Transcultural capital highlights the capacities and strategies of musicians to create various economic, cultural and social opportunities through links to both their host and home country.