Through Our Eyes: A Photovoice Study of Belonging, Precarity, and Possibility with International Students in Higher Education
Poster Author(s):
Through Our Eyes presents findings from a completed doctoral study exploring how international students experience belonging, precarity, and possibility within Canadian higher education. Conducted at Thompson Rivers University, the research engaged four international student co-researchers who used photography, reflective writing, and collaborative dialogue to document and interpret their everyday experiences of institutional inclusion, exclusion, and resilience.
Grounded in a critical-transformative paradigm, the study introduces blended witnessing, an original methodological approach integrating Photovoice, Scholarly Personal Narrative, and participatory interpretation. The poster features authentic participant-generated photographs and reflections, positioning students as knowledge creators whose lived experiences inform institutional understanding and change.
Four interconnected themes emerged: Malperformative Aesthetics, Architecture of Empty Promises, Refuges of Enough, and Ghost Data. The findings reveal tensions between institutional promises of inclusion and students’ experiences of financial pressures, competing employment obligations, restricted access to resources, and conditional belonging. They also illuminate the meaningful relationships, spaces of refuge, and everyday practices through which students create opportunities for connection and possibility.
The dissertation advances four original scholarly contributions: the time tax, malperformative aesthetics, blended witnessing and ghost data, and the mindset of enough. Together, these concepts offer new ways of understanding how institutional structures shape international student experiences and how students actively interpret and respond to those conditions.
Aligned with Thompson Rivers University’s Strategic Internationalization Plan, Goal 2, the research offers practical recommendations to strengthen international student support, including integrating curricular work, expanding accessible campus services, protecting study spaces, promoting relational teaching practices, and supporting meaningful student participation in institutional decision-making.
At the heart of this research is a guiding reflection:
“Belonging is not what institutions promise. It is what students experience.”
The poster invites educators, researchers, institutional leaders, and policymakers to reconsider how universities can move beyond symbolic inclusion towards meaningful belonging, relational accountability, and equitable opportunities for academic and personal success.
Read the full doctoral dissertation:
Research ethics: Thompson Rivers University and Royal Roads University Research Ethics Boards (2025).
Photographs: Original participant-generated images reproduced in accordance with research ethics and participant consent.