Year

2026

Season

Summer

Paper Type

Doctoral Dissertation

College

Silverfield College of Education and Human Services

Degree Name

Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership (EdD)

Department

Education

Committee Chairperson

Dr. Elizabeth Gregg

Second Advisor

Dr. Rakesh Maurya

Third Advisor

Dr. Amanda Pascale

Fourth Advisor

Dr. Kassie Terrell

Department Chair

Dr. Kristi Sweeney

College Dean

Dr. Daniel Dinsmore

Abstract

Doctoral students often experience loneliness, isolation, marginalization, and other challenges related to belonging. While prior research has connected belonging to persistence, well-being, and academic success, little is known about doctoral students’ lived experiences of belonging and loneliness. This hermeneutic phenomenological study, grounded in Max van Manen’s Phenomenology of Practice, guided by the Sense of Community Theory and informed by a Transformative Worldview, explored how institutional, structural, relational, and personal factors shaped doctoral students’ experiences. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using an interpretive phenomenological approach informed by van Manen’s lifeworld existentials, including lived relation, lived space, lived body, and lived time. The findings revealed that belonging was experienced as a relational, reciprocal, and emotional process, described through experiences of emotional safety, validation, authentic self-expression, shared struggle, and recognition within academic spaces. While loneliness emerged as an absence of meaningful connection, understanding, and support. Faculty relationships, cohort dynamics, program structures, identity, and institutional inequities further shaped access to belonging. The findings suggest that fostering belonging within doctoral education requires intentional relational and structural support. This study provides a phenomenological understanding of how belonging and loneliness are lived within doctoral education and offers implications and recommendations for institutional practice and program design, as well as recommendations for future research to enhance doctoral student support.

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