Our beliefs aren’t fixed. They’re shaped, stretched and sometimes overturned by the ideas we encounter as we move through life. For many of us, memoirs are the moments where that shift happens, through an argument that unsettles us or an inspiring story that re-frames how we see the world. We asked 11 academic experts to share a memoir that challenged their assumptions and changed their thinking in a lasting way.

Read more: The book that changed my mind – 12 experts share a perspective-shifting read

1. Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir (1958)

I first read Simone de Beauvoir’s Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter when I was quite young. I still imagined the self as something waiting to be uncovered – a private, essential core beneath family, society and the expectations that begin to shape us long before we know their names.

Beauvoir unsettled that belief. In her memoir, identity is not something found intact, but something made over time – often through the difficult unlearning of what once seemed unquestionable. I was struck by the idea that becoming oneself can involve a kind of departure: from the life others have imagined for us and from versions of ourselves we had mistaken for our own.

That thought has never quite left me. We inherit ways of seeing so quietly that they can feel like instinct, even truth. Beauvoir made me understand that becoming oneself is not only a journey inward. Sometimes it begins when we recognise the imprint of all that has shaped us and shed what, in the end, is no longer ours to keep.

Katayoun Shahandeh is a lecturer in History of Art and Museology

2. An Autobiography by Robin George Collingwood (1939)

Robin George Collingwood (1889-1943) was an archaeologist and professor of metaphysical philosophy. His autobiography is a short book (167 pages in its first printing), by a man who realised he had little time to live – he had already a suffered number of serious strokes.

The memoir details the development of his thought. Yet, it is also a profound and accessible reflection on the nature of philosophical enquiry and a commentary on intellectual life generally, as well as the rise of fascism. The book shows that it is possible to be insightful while writing in plain English.

Here, Collingwood expresses a truth about philosophy, history and politics that his contemporary George Orwell made slightly later regarding literature and writing. As an academic political theorist and historian, it brought me to recognise that all thought, even the most abstract philosophy, owes its meaning to the cultural and historical contexts in which it arose – that there is no view from nowhere. And it is just a joy to read!

Colin Tyler is a professor of applied ethics and political theory

3. Moving Zen: Karate as a way to Gentleness by C.W. Nicol (1975)

Karate entered my life when I was 15. Growing up on a council estate in Wales, my life choices felt limited. Karate nurtured a sense of identity and belonging. However, reading Moving Zen: Karate as a Way to Gentleness offered something deeper.

The vivid descriptions of karate training in 1960s Tokyo stirred something powerful within me – hope. Hope that led to a desire to live a life bigger than I had been born into.

Moving Zen inspired me and changed my mindset. Instead of........

© The Conversation