The VIII meeting of the Identity and Belonging group was dedicated to new perspectives on the studies of identity and belonging. 

We presented and discussed four texts:

- "Shape Shifting Across Social Media,” by Brittany I. Davidson and Adam N. Joinson.

- “Layers of Identity: How to Be ‘Real’ When Everyone Is Watching,” by Crystal Abidin. 

- "I am not a story,” by Galen Strawson. 

- "Identity formation among mixed families in a conflictual society: The case of Jewish-Muslim families in Israel,” by the group participant Alice Gaya.

Through the texts, we could reach new perspectives on how identity might be approached considering current configurations of the society, like the strong influence of social media and the appearance of “characters” such as the influencers. The first text, “Shape Shifting across Social Media,” investigates, through an exploratory study, how the shape-shifting of identity is concretized in different social media platforms. We thus discussed the various demands of each social media and its implication for identity presentation. The text “Layers of identity” shows how influencers’ identity is shaped by their followers’ expectations, playing with different layers to persuade their followers. And the text “I am not a story” brings the perspective of the Narrativists. They see life and identity as a narrative to defend that not necessarily an identity needs to be built narratively. Finally, Alice Gaya presented the paper as a result of her Ph.D. research, in which she researched the identity formation among Jewish-Muslim families in Israel. We could discuss the nuances of the different family experiences analyzed in the paper and possible deployments of their relationships.