Keele Research Repository

The purpose of this research is to explore the process of identity formation of first year higher education students. This study was designed in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and data was collected as COVID struck with full force during the academic year 2020-21 resulting in two national lockdowns. While exploring identity formation more generally was the original purpose of the study, an emergent area of enquiry soon became how the pandemic had influenced students’ entrepreneurial identity construction and how this in turn impacted upon their engagement with experiential based topics such as enterprise education.