Establishing international branch campuses (IBCs) has become one of the key strategies to facilitate the internationalisation of higher education. Researching IBC-related issues (e.g. student experiences, teaching practices, policy and governance) has also become a popular topic in international higher education. However, few studies have explored students’ identity formation in the IBC context. This qualitative study explores mainland Chinese students’ identity formation process in Hong Kong institutions’ intra-country branch campuses within the Greater Bay Area in mainland China. Drawing upon the notions of situated identity and global-national-local imbrications, this study unveils an intricate and nuanced process of identity development among students influenced by the interplay of global, national, and local factors in such an intra-country IBC context. The findings offer new insights into students’ identity formation in cross-border education. It also enhances understanding of the sustainable development of IBCs and strategies for internationalising higher education in the Greater Bay Area. Copyright © 2024 British Association for International and Comparative Education.

There is an increasing focus on relationship-rich education and relational pedagogies in higher education. Engaging students as partners (SaP) to nurture values-based pedagogical relationships is one such approach, yet it is contested with limited research outside of Anglophone countries. To advance a collective understanding of SaP as a global practice, we interviewed 35 postgraduate students at a research-intensive university in Hong Kong with a hybridised educational setting combining Chinese and westernised strategies and heritages. Reflecting on their learner-teacher relationships as both undergraduate and postgraduate students, they discussed differing senses of student identity that shaped how they perceived their pedagogical relationships: entanglement of positioning themselves as followers, customers, and co-teachers. The influence of neoliberalism, capitalism, and marketisation of higher education in the Hong Kong context was evident throughout the interviews. We discuss the implications for learner-teacher relationships as a pedagogical partnership in the broader hybridised higher education context of Hong Kong. In doing so, we argue that students are navigating an in-betweenness that shapes how they see themselves and the pedagogical relationships they form with teaching staff. Copyright ©2023 Springer.