There were many lessons learnt in the aftermath of this publication – some, more painful than others. But whilst I’m now in the thick of writing my doctoral thesis, I want to cling onto that sense of fun I felt when I saw myself as a real researcher for the first time as a second-year undergraduate.

This paper and this project will always be a huge part of why I fell in love with research as a creative process. It showed me the fruitfulness of being inquisitive and the joy to be found in following threads of curiosity, simply because it was enjoyable to.

That memory sums up for me how much I didn't know about research yet, but how much I loved learning more about it. There’s something quite beautiful in the way I nervously but earnestly, and at times, naively, approached research at the time.

I described the method I was using and asked if it was some form of ethnography. Austin had to tell me that my method was indeed something called ‘autoethnography’ – a method I would grow to love and a word I, of course, spelt wrong when I submitted it as a keyword in the initial paper submission!!

A key memory for me working on this project was around 5 weeks into fieldwork. I turned up at office hours with my then academic mentor, @azeiderman.bsky.social, in an excited but chaotic state! I had sat in my first research methods class on ethnography earlier that week.

I’ve come a long way since walking around London and KL with an air pollution exposure sensor strapped to my backpack. But when I re-read these words I wrote as an enthusiastic and passionate 19-year-old, that excitement to write reflectively and vulnerably has not changed.

As a teenager in Malaysia, I spent hours scrolling the RGS website, dreaming about studying Geography at university. So, to have a piece that started as scribbles in notebooks on benches in my favourite parks one summer in London, find its way into an academic journal was surreal and huge for me !!

Five years ago today, my first ever (and only) peer-reviewed paper was accepted for publication in @areajournal.bsky.social ♥️♥️

I had just finished my undergraduate degree at LSE that summer, and the news came in the evening before I moved to Oxford for my MSc.

doi.org/10.1111/area...

port meadow sunset on saturday ✨

I’ve started to post snippets from the visual component of my PhD research on here: instagram.com/objects_of_h...

“Objects of homes” is part of my wider PhD project on transnational homes and belonging, which focuses on how people might bridge their lives ‘here’ and ‘there’ in material ways ♥️

As ever, my faith grounds me & fills my life with deep peace. Knowing I am unconditionally loved gives my life more purpose than any project ever could, and provides necessary perspective to hold my work loosely, with care, but with fingers stretched. And to actually enjoy the creative process ♥️♥️

The last year and a bit has been wild and starting from scratch came with its challenges, but it's the best decision I could've made! After a tricky couple of years navigating the uglier sides of academia, having joy seep back into my experience of research has been overwhelming and such a relief!

This isn't the PhD project I started on, but it's one that is very close to my heart. When I returned to my PhD after a year off in Sept 2023, for many reasons, I decided to completely change my research topic and return to the questions that first drew me into human geography at school.

As privilege is embedded in complex ways in these forms of mobility & can give rise to a sense of responsibility of privilege & what people expect + aspire out of personal experiences of mobility, I'm interested in the tensions between understandings of privilege + hostility people might encounter.

I explore the emotional dimensions of decisions on mobility, alongside the creative material + temporal strategies people might adopt to feel 'at home' and 'belong' in new environments, whilst often maintaining links to where they come from.

Very broadly, my doctoral research seeks to capture the lived experiences of Malaysian Chinese students and graduates as they (we) search for and make 'homes' in the UK, exploring how two geographies intimately linked by colonial legacies are bridged in transnational homes.

Hello! 👋🏻 I've been sort of away from any form of academic networking since I was an undergrad, so it's prob good to do a bit of an intro on here! I'm Sarah, I'm a human geographer from Malaysia, currently in the fieldwork stage of my PhD at the University of Oxford 🌻🌻