Meet the Student Curator
Hi! I’m Angelina, a History student at the University of York and one of this year’s Student Curators.
Some of my academic interests centre around identity, cultural exchange, and the ways people understand themselves within wider historical and social contexts. Through modules exploring topics such as the Islamic world, empire, and cultural interaction, I have become increasingly interested in how identities are formed, challenged, and reshaped over time.
Alongside my academic interests, this theme is also personal to me. I have Lebanese and English heritage, and throughout my life I have moved between different places, communities, and social environments. As a result, I have found myself reflecting on questions of home, belonging, and identity.
More recently, these questions have felt especially significant as conflict near my father’s hometown has affected members of my family and prompted conversations about displacement, memory, and what it means to belong to a place. I wanted to honour the sacrifice he made in moving so far away from his family so that we might have better opportunities and more safety, and I have decided to do so by highlighting parts of his experience in moving to the UK.
Introducing “Between Worlds”
For my curation project, I will be exploring the theme “Between Worlds: Identity, Belonging, and the In-Between.”
This collection examines the experiences of people who exist between cultures, identities, communities. It explores what it means to navigate multiple identities at once, through migration, mixed heritage, diaspora, language, family history, or personal experience.
While discussions of identity often focus on categories and labels, I am interested in the spaces between them. What happens when you don’t feel fully represented by a single identity? How do people create a sense of home when they belong to multiple places at once? How do individuals navigate social worlds that sometimes seem to pull them in different directions?
These questions are increasingly relevant in a diverse and international university community, where many students are negotiating different aspects of their identity every day.
Why This Theme Matters
Belonging is something many of us think about, whether consciously or unconsciously.
For some people, it might involve balancing different cultural backgrounds. For others, it may relate to moving between countries, languages, faiths, or communities. I hope this curation creates space for those conversations. Rather than focusing solely on struggle, I want to highlight the creativity, resilience, and self-definition that often emerge from living between worlds.
Questions of identity and belonging feel particularly significant at the moment. Across the UK, conversations around immigration, national identity, and who belongs within society have become increasingly visible and often deeply polarised. Public debate can sometimes reduce migration to statistics, policies, or political slogans, leaving little room for the lived experiences of the individuals and families whose lives are shaped by these issues. These are not abstract issues but realities that continue to affect communities both within the UK and across the world.
One of my motivations for choosing this theme is a desire to highlight the human experiences that can sometimes be lost within wider political debates. I aim to explore the complexities of belonging, while creating space for voices that are not always heard. Rather than presenting a single narrative, I want this collection to reflect the diversity of experiences that exist within immigrant and diasporic communities, as well as the many different ways people understand home.
By bringing together various perspectives across this curation, I hope the collection encourages reflection, empathy, and a stronger sense of connection across our university community.
What to Expect
Over the coming weeks, I will be researching and curating a collection of books, articles, memoirs, poetry, and other resources that explore themes of identity and belonging from a range of perspectives.
The collection may include:
- Fiction exploring migration, diaspora, and mixed identity
- Memoirs and personal narratives
- Academic works on identity, culture, and belonging
- Voices from underrepresented communities
One question has stayed with me throughout the development of this project: What does home mean to you?
As the collection develops, I hope to gather responses from students and members of the wider community. I have created the google form below where, if you choose, you can submit your ideas of home, which can be highlighted in the collection. Whether home is a place, a language, a person, a memory, or something more complicated, I would love to hear different perspectives:
I am excited to begin this journey and look forward to sharing the collection with you over the coming weeks.