I study how people build and keep a sense of belonging — in families, classrooms, and the places we gather online. My work asks what makes connection hold, and what quietly breaks it.
Three papers, if you only read three
Belonging without proximity: connection in distributed communities
Attachment styles and academic persistence among first-year students
Measuring felt inclusion: a scale development study
Belonging isn't the absence of distance. It's the presence of people who feel like yours.
Four threads, one question
Belonging
What makes a place feel like yours — and what quietly withdraws that feeling.
Attachment
How early bonds echo forward into how we learn, work, and hold onto people.
Identity
The selves we carry across rooms, and the cost of leaving parts at the door.
Well-being
Connection as infrastructure for a life that feels steady, not just full.
Notes from the work in progress
What 40 interviews taught me about the word "home"
People describe belonging in the language of maintenance, not arrival — you keep it, you don't reach it.
Keynote at the Asian Social Psychology meeting
The felt-inclusion scale crossed 500 citations
Notes on Baumeister & Leary, thirty years later
From the journal
The texture of attention in high-density online environments
An examination of how digital spaces alter the pacing and reciprocity of human relationships.
Belongingness vs. Identity: A conceptual distinction
Why identifying with a group is not the same as feeling like you belong, and why it matters for mental health.
Let's build something that holds.
Open to collaboration, freelance work, and the occasional good conversation. Reach out any time.