Dr Siti Mazidah Mohamad5
5Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, , Brunei
The field of international student mobilities remains a fertile ground for research as exemplified by the expansion of discourses on students mobilities by researchers within this field over the recent years (Yoon 2014, Cairns 2016, Doughty and Murray 2016, Yang 2018). While the interest in students’ mobilities and the recognition of experiential learning initiatives continue to grow in size and intensities, future aspirations, mobilities aspirations and mobilities decision-making by the students themselves within an institutionalised mobilities programme remain understudied especially in the context of Southeast Asian students mobilities (Ortiga 2018 and Phan 2018). Mobilities for educational purpose is not a straightforward matter informed by just the need to be future ready. A young and emerging university in Southeast Asia, we used Universiti Brunei Darussalam’s flagship Discovery Year programme as a research site and the experiences of the 47 students who have been on Discovery Year within the last two years elicited by semi-structured interviews, this paper aims to demonstrate the complexities of students mobilities in the context of their mobilities aspirations and decision-making. This paper also hoped to offer insights into the students’ reworking of aspirations and rethinking of adult future as an ongoing and reflexive activity in the context of today’s precarious condition locally and globally.
Biography
Siti Mazidah Haji Mohamad is a Lecturer at Universiti Brunei Darussalam. She graduated from Durham University (PhD in Human Geography) in 2015. Her main research interest lies at the intersection of geography, youth, and media and communication studies. She is a youth geographer researching youth’s mobilities, everyday social practices, and their social realities reflected through various new social media platforms.