Collective Memory Work on 'Students' Sense of Belonging: Practices of Involvement, Power and Learning

In the context of work on young people’s experiences in the field of youth and
educational studies, this chapter discusses issues of learning, power, and
involvement with empirical examples from a collective memory work project
on students’ memories of belonging in higher education. While theoretical
discussions, analysis of written memories, and guidelines for such projects
have been widely covered, very little has been written about the dynamics of
the process of involving participants in a research group or collective.
Furthermore, little has been written about how the interpretation of memories
relates to participants’ learning processes during the associated workshops.
Consequently, this chapter contributes understandings of the learning
processes and power dynamics that took place in our effort to establish a
research collective with higher education students and in the collective work
of finding and analysing a shared social experience.