📖 Start Here: How to Read This Blog
This is a doctoral dissertation blog. The research is pre-defence and in active production. You are reading a living academic document.
Start Here: How to Read This Blog
I built this site the way I build my syllabi: I want you to be able to find what you need, read in the order that makes sense to you, and understand what you are looking at. If you have arrived here without context, this page is your guide. If you have arrived here as a scholar, a student, a policy-maker, or simply someone who has ever felt invisible inside an institution, there is a path through this material that was designed with you in mind.
What This Site Is
This is the public-facing research blog for my doctoral dissertation, Through Our Eyes: Witnessing Belonging, Precarity, and Possibility in Higher Education, completed in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Social Sciences (DSocSci) degree at Royal Roads University. The dissertation uses Scholarly Personal Narrative (SPN) and participatory visual inquiry (photovoice) to examine how international students at Thompson Rivers University experience belonging, precarity, and structural exclusion inside the Canadian university system.
The site has three functions. It serves as a public record of the research in progress. It serves as an accessibility tool, making the dissertation available to the students and communities it concerns, many of whom will never enter a university library. And it serves as an argument in its own right: that scholarship published only behind paywalls is scholarship that cannot do the work it claims to do.
⚠️ This Site Is in Production
This blog is active and growing. New pages are added regularly as the dissertation moves toward its final defence. Some sections remain in draft form, and certain content, including participant photographs, participant testimony, and empirical findings, is held until after the doctoral defence in accordance with research ethics protocols. If you visit a page that appears incomplete, it is because that content is pending ethical clearance for public release. Please check back after the defence.
How This Site Is Organized
The site is organized into three sections, each corresponding to a dimension of the research. You can navigate using the sidebar or start with the overview below.
| Section | What It Contains | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Section One: The Researcher | My positionality statement, supervisory committee, and the researcher strand of the Scholarly Personal Narrative. This is where I locate myself in the study. | Readers who want to understand who is conducting this research and why |
| Section Two: The Research | The formal academic components of the dissertation: background, problem statement, research questions, conceptual framework, methodology, literature review, annotated bibliography, glossary, significance, scholarly conversation map, and appendices (instruments and protocols) | Scholars, supervisors, committee members, and anyone reading this as a dissertation |
| Section Three: Going Deeper | Extended essays, conceptual explorations, and SPN pieces that go beyond the formal dissertation structure. These pages expand on theoretical concepts, policy contexts, and methodological arguments in my own voice. | Readers who want the human story alongside the academic argument; educators, policy-makers, and students |
Suggested Reading Paths
Different readers arrive here with different purposes. The table below offers four suggested paths through the material.
| Reader Type | Suggested Starting Point | Then Read | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| International Students at TRU | Asymmetrical Precarity | When Awareness Becomes Harm · Shared Precarity · Blog posts | This research is about you. Start with the concept that names what many students experience but rarely see named. |
| Scholars and Researchers | Study Overview | Conceptual Framework · Methodology · Literature Review | The formal academic architecture of the study is in Section Two. Pre-defence: findings and participant data are held. |
| Educators and Practitioners | Nineteen Years of Learning to See | Blended Witnessing · Malperformative Inclusion | Begin with the pedagogical SPN strand before moving into the theoretical and methodological frames. |
| Policy Makers and Administrators | Background: The Context | Problem Statement · Significance · Blog posts tagged Policy Context | The policy implications of this research are distributed across several sections. The background page anchors the structural argument. |
How to Use the Blog Posts
In addition to the formal dissertation pages, this site includes a growing archive of blog posts. Each post is a standalone SPN piece or theoretical exploration that can be read independently. Posts are tagged by theme and category so that you can find clusters of related reading.
Blog Categories
- Researcher Reflections: First-person SPN pieces in which I examine my own positionality, assumptions, and experience as both researcher and practitioner. These are the heart of the Scholarly Personal Narrative strand.
- Theoretical Framework: Posts that develop or apply the conceptual tools of the study: asymmetrical precarity, malperformative inclusion, malperformative aesthetics, ghost data, and blended witnessing.
- Policy Context: Posts that examine the structural and policy conditions surrounding the study, including the 2024 study permit cap, academic capitalism, and the financial architecture of Canadian higher education.
- Participant Voices: Posts that include participant-generated concepts and theoretical contributions. Some content in this category is held until after the doctoral defence.
- Methodology: Posts that explain the research methods: photovoice, SPN, blended witnessing, and the ethical and relational dimensions of participatory visual inquiry.
- Dissertation Chapters: Posts that correspond directly to formal dissertation chapters or sections.
- Additional Resources: Recommended readings, key scholars, external organizations, and policy resources that complement the dissertation.
Key Terms to Know Before You Read
This research introduces several original theoretical concepts. Understanding these terms will help you navigate the material. Each is explained in full in the Glossary.
| Term | Brief Definition | Where to Read More |
|---|---|---|
| Asymmetrical Precarity | The condition in which contract faculty and international students share structural precarity but at different intensities and with different stakes. The word asymmetrical matters: shared does never mean equal. | Asymmetrical Precarity page |
| Malperformative Inclusion | Institutional inclusion practices that perform awareness without producing change. Named after J. L. Austin’s distinction between performative and constative speech acts, re-read through Sara Ahmed’s work on diversity as institutional performance. | Malperformative Inclusion page |
| Ghost Data | Knowledge held by international students that the institution neither collects, credits, nor acts upon. Student expertise that is structurally invisible. | Glossary |
| Blended Witnessing | A methodological stance in which the researcher and participants witness each other’s knowledge simultaneously, dissolving the traditional boundary between researcher observation and participant testimony. | Blended Witnessing page |
| Scholarly Personal Narrative (SPN) | A research methodology developed by scholars including Nash and Bradley that weaves first-person experience with scholarly argument. The method insists that the researcher’s lived experience is both data and analysis. | What Is a Scholarly Personal Narrative? |
Accessibility and Open Access
This site is designed to be readable without specialized academic training. I have tried to define technical terms when I introduce them, link to the Glossary for reference, and write in a way that honours both scholarly precision and human readability. The research concerns people who deserve access to what is being said about their conditions. Open access is an ethical commitment of this project, central to the project, never an afterthought.
If you encounter accessibility barriers, including content that is unclear, navigation that is difficult, or material that is missing, please reach out. Contact information is available on the About the Author page.
A Note on What Is Held Until After the Defence
Research ethics in participatory visual inquiry require that participant photographs, participant quotations, and participant-generated theoretical contributions remain confidential until after the doctoral defence and until participants have reviewed and approved what is attributed to them publicly. This means that several sections of this site are intentionally incomplete. You will find placeholder notices where participant content belongs. These are ethical boundaries, intentional rather than oversights. The research findings will be released after the defence and after participant review.
Questions
If you have questions about the research, the methodology, or how to navigate this site, the Frequently Asked Questions page covers the most common ones. You are also welcome to reach out directly through the About the Author page.