Session Outline

Universities in the UK increasingly recognise the strategic need to foster belonging, mattering, and community for the whole of our student population. However, we need to understand how this relates specifically to international students. Over the last decade UKHE institutions have seen a significant increase in the number of international students; whilst their presence enhances the dynamics, diversity, and sustainability of the institution, there must be recognition of the needs of this student body for support navigating their new environment. The issues which they encounter include cultural and language barriers, adjusting to new academic demands, culture shock, financial pressures, and visa issues—challenges well documented within contemporary analyses of international student agency and adaptation (Cockayne, 2025; Deuchar, 2022; Page & Chabouns, 2019).

Whilst there is recognition of a support deficit for international students at many levels of the institution, at the chalk face of higher education delivery and practice, and in critical international research, it is now being acknowledged that there are complex ethical dimensions to this aspect of internationalised HE. Scholars have argued that higher education often relies on oversimplified or binary assumptions about "international students" that risk obscuring the heterogeneity of their needs (Jones, 2017). In addition, sector level reviews have demonstrated that institutional approaches to internationalisation and student support across the UK are often fragmented, unevenly implemented, and insufficiently responsive to the diversity of international student outcomes and experiences (Mittelmeier et al., 2022). At the same time, recent theoretical developments highlight the importance of recognising international students as active participants whose practices shape the learning environment, rather than viewing them as passive recipients of institutional structures (Deuchar, 2022; Cockayne, 2025; Page & Chabouns, 2019).

A new Personal Tutoring system was introduced in our Faculty in 2024. This system is seeking to offer all students parity in their experience of academic and pastoral support. We will consider the Faculty of Arts and Humanities international student experience, and the problems academics have encountered with this group. Drawing on the research of Cockayne (2025), which emphasises the embodied, place based processes through which international students negotiate belonging within unfamiliar environments, the WeBelong project is a practice led initiative seeking to hold space for the complex difficulties international students face. Yet, in the Arts and Humanities, we have not seen an adjustment to Personal Tutoring (or wider) structures to address the requirements of the international student population—particularly their need for belonging, which Jones (2017) argues cannot be adequately understood through generic support frameworks.

This paper will therefore provide a case study based on the problems we have experienced and will outline a pilot project designed to address the perceived deficit in international students’ experience and sense of belonging. Audience members can expect to be engaged in the active ongoing development of this area of practice. We will provide opportunities for the audience to ask questions and engage in dialogue.

If Belonging Isn’t Optional, we will ask participants to engage in developing and identifying opportunities to address belonging challenges faced by international students. Using the pilot WeBelong project aimed at improving the international student experience, the workshop will invite participants to explore some of the methods being used, with an aim to gather feedback on the project and this area of education practice together.

Learning Outcomes

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