Hyunmin Lee is an educational technology researcher and educator whose work focuses on learning analytics, AI-supported learning, and pedagogical design in higher education. He brings an interdisciplinary academic background to his research, having studied vocal performance at Kyung Hee University’s College of Music in South Korea, completed his master’s and doctoral studies in Education at the same university, and later earned a Master of Information Technology specialising in Data Analytics at the University of Technology Sydney between 2022 and 2024.His doctoral thesis, completed in 2017, developed Carnival Pedagogy, a teaching and learning theory that extends constructivist epistemology by bringing together Bakhtin’s theory of carnival and Freire’s critical pedagogy. Before joining UTS, he worked as a Special Appointment Professor at Samyuk Health University (2017–2019) and as a doctoral-level researcher at Hanyang Cyber University in South Korea (2020–2022), where he conducted research on constructivist instructional design and educational methods.This diverse academic journey across music, education, and data analytics has shaped his distinctive identity as a researcher. It has also encouraged him to move confidently across disciplinary boundaries, connecting creative, pedagogical, and analytical perspectives in his work. His current research explores how AI facilitators can support learner motivation, which he sees as a key driver of both short-term academic achievement and long-term lifelong learning.