Introduction

The idea for this book started with a simple observation: there is a lot of research produced about international students, and much of it is not very good. This was initially an informal observation, which was later substantiated through several systematic reviews developed across various projects (Lomer & Mittelmeier, 2023; Mittelmeier et al., 2022; Mittelmeier & Yang, 2022). Along the way, we started creating online resources to support better research designs, which organically garnered attention from fellow scholars. This edited volume formalises and builds upon that work by bringing together 49 critical researchers to form a collective scholarly critique of existing research, pushing forward new agendas for the future of research with international students as a subfield within higher education studies. We met throughout the writing process, both in our editorial team and as larger consortiums of authors, to discuss and dream about what that future might contain.