“Stories of Leaving and Belonging: Building Community through Listening at George Mason” is an arts, culture, and storytelling initiative that centers student voices to explore experiences of migration, departure, and belonging. Through student-led, ethnographic storytelling, the project creates spaces for listening and reflection while fostering empathy and understanding across the George Mason University community.
Since its launch, the project has completed 17 in-depth interviews highlighting various student experiences of leaving places, forming identities, and navigating belonging. These interviews are carefully crafted into multimedia narratives, which are published on the IIR website and adapted for engagement with broader public audiences. In addition to public-facing storytelling, the project produces detailed metadata and analytic materials that support interdisciplinary research on migration, identity, and community-building.
The project further extends its impact through a symposium taking place on April 17–18, 2026, which will examine how arts, culture, and storytelling can be used to build community and highlight contributions and challenges of immigrant populations in the United States. By combining qualitative methods with creative narrative forms, Stories of Leaving and Belonging advances IIR’s commitment to research and public scholarship rooted in lived experience.
For more information about Leaving and Belonging or to see our published stories, click here.
February 10, 2026