Doctoral students in Hong Kong : exploring academic identity formation trajectories of Mainland Chinese doctoral students /

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Student Theses

2025

Liu, Yabing

Hong Kong : The Education University of Hong Kong

Thesis

This doctoral thesis investigates the nascent academic identity formation of Mainland Chinese Doctoral Students (MCDS) studying in Hong Kong. Drawing on a composite theoretical framework integrating Archer's structure-agency model, Marginson's theory of self-formation, and McAlpine et al.'s academic identity trajectory approach, the study explores how MCDS navigate structural constraints, exercise reflexive agency, and engage in longitudinal identity development. Utilising a qualitative narrative inqiriy methodology, the study is based on semi-structured interviews with 14 MCDS across a range of disciplines and institutional settings. Through thematic analysis, the research develops a typology of four emergent identity trajectories: Independent Explorers, Anxious Learners, Strategic Players, and Inspired Humanists. These types reveal differentiated responses to performance-oriented academic environments, disciplinary cultures, and relational dynamics-highlighting fluid, hybrid, and often contradictory identity formations shaped by both structural pressures and reflexive agency. The findings extend existing theories by applying self-formation to an intranational mobility setting, conceptualising agency as emotionally and relationally situated, and foregrounding the Confucian cultural ethos that underpins supervisory relationships and self-construction. The study further advances the understanding of doctoral identity formation under conditions of neoliberalism and supercomplexity, showing how students' identities emerge through dynamic engagements with policy, discipline, institutional cultures, and micro-environments of care. This research contributes both theoretically and empirically to the literature on doctoral education, international mobility, and academic identity, and offers nuanced insights into how emerging scholars navigate becoming in increasingly competitive and pluralised higher education landscapes

LG51.H43 Dr 2025eb Liuy

https://educoll.lib.eduhk.hk/records/SMXz2YgF