‘I Already Know the City, I Don’t Have to Explore it’: Adjustments to ‘Sense of Place’ for ‘Local’ UK University Students

Abstract

Recent conceptualisations of place have sought to reconsider place as being the sedentary equivalent to mobility, instead recognising its dynamism and its potential for evoking powerful emotional responses. These notions hold particular resonance in the realm of higher education, with discussions emerging of the important influence place may hold for students as they progress through university.Although this has been recognised from the perspective of ‘mobile’ students, what is less clear is how these notions of placemight influence the trajectories of ‘local’ students, specifically how feelings of place disruption or identity dislocation might spill out into their non-student lives and their wider sense of ‘being’ students (or nonstudents) within what are often highly emotive and memory-laden places. This is important as the process of ‘re-sensing’ place through the lens of a student may challenge long-established conceptions of the city for ‘local’ students.