An autoethnography of an international doctoral student’s multidimensional identity construction

Abstract

There is a scarcity of scholarship that sheds light on international doctoral students’ identity construction in quotidian encounters beyond the formal curriculum. In this autoethnographic study, based on my diary entries, via a socio-constructivist lens, I teased out my multidimensional identity construction by referring to situations, activities and relations embedded in daily experiences during my overseas study sojourn. My autoethnography reveals that how I make sense of my becoming and being as a Chinese sojourning in Australia for doctoral education transcends the experientiality of doing research alone, but incorporates gendered, sociocultural and professional facets within my past-present-future life trajectory. As I navigated these encounters, strategically mobilising my agency and utilising structural contexts towards the aim of achieving ontological security, I engaged in negotiating a transformative identity. The research calls for more studies in the future that explore the complexities and nuances of international doctoral students’ identity construction in quotidian realities.