Comparative Research: Originality and Differentiation

Current Situation & Related Projects

Environmental psychology, sensory design, and creative technology have all conducted extensive research on homesickness, spatial displacement, and sensory nostalgia in international students.

Institutional & Campaign efforts (e.g., HSBC’s Sounds of Home, 2019): To assist international students connect with their home countries, corporate campaigns and university well-being efforts sometimes incorporate auditory soundscapes (e.g., local markets, transit noise, native languages). Although these programs recognize sensory boundaries, they frequently provide passive, widely disseminated information (like as pre-recorded tracks) without involving players in active spatial creation.

Sensory and Olfactory Installations (e.g., CRASSH Scents & Imagination, 2025; RCA Olfactory Migration Projects): Olfaction as a sociocultural marker for identity, migration, and memory is the subject of recent practice-led creative study. Olfactory installations are used in projects like as Yati Sharma’s The Olfactory Dimension of Cultural Integration (Royal College of Art, 2024) to provoke memories of loss and spatial belonging among migrants. However, rather than being incorporated into participants’ private, residential spaces, these activities are mostly gallery-bound or curated in public exhibition contexts.

Studies on psychological and experimental emotions (such as PMC Food Nostalgia Studies and Oliver et al., 2024): Numerous studies have examined how nostalgia mitigates spatial anxiety and disorientation. To induce state nostalgia, these investigations often use standardized visual or olfactory stimuli in controlled laboratory settings.

How My Project Differs

This project presents a participative, practice-led design framework in contrast to traditional sensory campaigns that depend on single-medium products, passive gallery installations, or restorative nostalgia. The study involves overseas students as active co-creators in their own household micro-spaces by including a dual-sensory process that combines tactile transitional artifacts for instantaneous physical anchoring with olfactory cues to access memory. In the end, it moves the emphasis from passively yearning for home to actively fostering spatial belonging, emotional agency, and introspective nostalgia while residing abroad.