The Road Ahead

Stories, insights, research & tools for navigating life abroad

The first story on this blog told you where Good Space came from. This one is about where we’re going.

I don’t want this to be just another blog about expat life. I want it to be a place where personal experience meets psychology — where stories can be explored through research, and research can become something useful in real life.

Stories

Narrative psychology has long been an important influence on both my professional work and research interests. Stories have always fascinated me. They remind me that every person is, in a way, a whole world — shaped by experiences, relationships, places, cultures and the meanings we give them.

Writing is personal to me, too. Throughout my life, it has been one of the ways I’ve made sense of difficult experiences, transitions and change. So there will definitely be stories here — some of mine, some inspired by the themes I encounter in my work and research, and perhaps some that simply make us stop and think.

Research

A single story can tell us what it feels like to live abroad. Research allows us to take a step back and see the bigger picture. When we look across hundreds or thousands of individual experiences, certain patterns begin to emerge — in how people adapt, build a sense of belonging, negotiate their identities, form relationships, or experience wellbeing far from home.

For me, this is where research becomes particularly fascinating: it can shed new light on experiences that may feel deeply personal, while showing us that they are also part of broader dynamics of living across cultures. And I want to bring some of that research out of academic papers and into everyday conversations.

Insights

Stories help us understand individual experiences. Research helps us recognise the patterns behind them. But I believe some of the most interesting insights emerge when we bring the two together.

This is where I want to connect what we know with what we experience — to explore how psychological knowledge can help us make sense of our own stories, challenge familiar assumptions and discover new ways of looking at ourselves and the world around us.

Not necessarily to find definitive answers, but to ask better questions and see things from a different perspective.

Tools

And finally, I want some of what you find here to be genuinely useful.

Sometimes that might mean a question worth reflecting on. Sometimes a psychological concept, an exercise, a different way of looking at a problem, or something you can actually try in your everyday life.

Not every post will contain all four. Some will be mostly stories. Others will dive deeper into research or offer something practical.

But together, I hope they will make Good Space a place to pause, get curious, understand a little more — and perhaps find your own way forward.