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For my Student Devised Assessment on the IATL module Global Connections, I created a stop-motion animation exploring the question "Is a person a place?". This question is rooted in my own experience as a Third Culture Kid, having grown up, respectively, in Yemen, Qatar, South Africa, Rwanda, Pakistan, and St Helena. The animation used layered paper and reconfigured lighting to achieve partial transparency, creating a visualisation of how past cultural influences are never fully erased, while location-specific soundscapes such as calls to prayer, hoofbeats, waves, and mynah birds evoke the subconscious ways we come to know a place. Drawing on thinkers like Doreen Massey, Stuart Hall, and Yi-Fu Tuan, the piece argued that for TCKs, home is not a set of coordinates but a relational geography – a stream of experience anchored in the people who remain constant.

Making the animation was one of the most rewarding parts of my degree so far, as it brought together academic research with something deeply personal. The creative experience was equally rewarding, as building the set by hand and experimenting with light and sound became a way of thinking through theory in parallel with writing, rather than just illustrating it. The project also shaped how I approach my wider studies in Global Sustainable Development; it gave me a deeper appreciation of how identity, belonging, and place intersect with other global issues, and it showed me that creative methods can communicate research in ways that traditional academic writing sometimes cannot.

Presenting the work at the British Conference of Undergraduate Research, BCUR 2026 at the University of Glasgow, was a particularly special experience. I was nervous as it was a creative presentation, and I felt quite exposed, but the audience's reaction was overwhelmingly positive.

During the Q&A, people shared how the themes of identity and belonging resonated with their own experiences on a thematic level, while fellow TCKs in the room expressed a more direct sense of autobiographical recognition and lived experience. Others were drawn to the creative process behind the animation, which meant a great deal given how much I had enjoyed making it. Beyond my own session, the conference as a whole was incredibly inspiring, not just for the breadth of research on show, from Roman military standards to Ecuador's eco-constitutionalism to narrative therapy in drug rehabilitation, but for the sense of community. Meeting students from Toronto, Hong Kong, across the UK and beyond, all passionate about such different things, reminded me why I value academic research. It has left me genuinely excited for the research projects and thesis I have ahead.