Journal article 177 views
Using Historical Approaches to Understand Contemporary Student Loneliness
Sarah Crook 
Higher Education Research and Development
Swansea University Author:
Sarah Crook
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DOI (Published version): 10.1080/07294360.2024.2393122
Abstract
Student loneliness is a global problem, with universities struggling to tackle an issue that has important implications for student success, satisfaction, and mental health. This research uses archival material from the 1960s and 1970s alongside qualitative discussions with contemporary students to...
| Published in: | Higher Education Research and Development |
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| Published: |
2025
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| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa67137 |
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| Abstract: |
Student loneliness is a global problem, with universities struggling to tackle an issue that has important implications for student success, satisfaction, and mental health. This research uses archival material from the 1960s and 1970s alongside qualitative discussions with contemporary students to explore the ways that experiences of loneliness within British higher education have changed across recent decades. Such an approach bridges the divergent approaches taken by different scholarly disciplines, applying focus group methodologies to the consideration of archival material. For this project five focus groups were held with undergraduate students at four universities in England, Wales and Scotland. This article argues for the contemporary relevance of historical research into student loneliness, exploring student responses to their predecessors’ experiences of loneliness. It argues that equipping undergraduates with a deeper knowledge about their forerunners’ experiences of disconnection can trouble some of the stereotypes, assumptions, and expectations around the sociable ‘student experience’ today. Such an approach has widespread implications for researchers’ and policy makers’ understandings of the potential role of interdisciplinary and humanities-generated knowledge in addressing social problems within higher education. |
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| College: |
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Funders: |
ESRC via SMARTEN ( ES/S00324X/1) |