Irina Dragomir is a researcher within the Organisations and Social Media professorship and a PhD candidate at the University of Groningen. Her work focuses on identity, belonging, and place attachment, particularly in the context of international communities.
Irina is originally from Bucharest, Romania, and is half Romanian and half Egyptian, which has always made identity a lived experience rather than just a concept. Her academic background spans Business Administration in Tourism Management, European Languages and Cultures, Cultural Geography, which she later complemented with an MBA in Educational Leadership.
She has been part of NHL Stenden since 2019, and works across research, project management and education. Irina moves between conducting research, engaging stakeholders and contributing to educational outputs with student involvement.
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She is currently completing a qualitative case study on value-driven influencing practices, exploring how content creators embed and reflect on values in their work. Alongside this, her PhD focuses on how international students in the northern regions of the Netherlands develop a sense of attachment to the places they study and live in.
Irina’s main interests center on cultures, heritage, identity construction, and belonging. Growing up between two cultures, moving countries and constantly navigating what it means to fit in or stand out led her toward questions that are both deeply personal and academically rich.
What drives her work is a strong awareness of how it feels not to belong. She believes that as the world becomes more polarized, the question of where and whether people feel they belong becomes more urgent. She recognizes the feeling of not belonging as an experience that never quite leaves. Because of that, she aims to bring a different perspective to how we think about international communities and place attachment, and to make the experience of not belonging a little less present for others who are navigating the same experience.