We are delighted to announce the publication of Empowering Student Minds: Academic Self-Formation in Higher Education (Oxford University Press, 2026) by Dr Soyoung Lee, Assistant Professor in the Department of Education Policy and Leadership. <photo1> Why do we go to university, and who do we become there? In this book, Dr Lee proposes a new framework for understanding higher education as a process of students’ ‘academic self-formation’. Rather than seeing students as simply shaped by their university experience, the book shows how they actively form themselves through engagement with knowledge, highlighting the central yet often overlooked roles of student agency and knowledge. Self-formation, a concept developed by Simon Marginson, has become an influential idea in higher education, yet empirical research on it remains scattered. Building on her co-edited volume Student Agency and Self-Formation in Higher Education, Dr Lee develops the concept into a book-length account. Through ethnographic research with local and international students across Western and East Asian contexts and disciplines, the book brings students’ stories vividly to life, while engaging with Confucian traditions to offer an East Asian counterpoint to a largely Western debate. As the first monograph on students’ academic self-formation, the book lays the groundwork for a new research agenda and makes the case for renewing the intrinsic purposes of higher education, including intellectual exploration, personal growth and student agency, beyond the limits of neoliberal policy.
The book is now available on Oxford Academic. Read the book here.