Shen-Yung Lee's academic work began from studying the establishment of information communication, distribution mechanisms, and systems of China from the perspectives of political economics and public policy analysis.

Recently, due to career needs, Lee has intended to apply political economics and public policy analysis to education in order to conduct interdisciplinary research.

Specifically, his recent research focuses on the production and communication of knowledge. The key goal is to determine the possibility of public knowledge communication under the influence of the growing trend toward neoliberalism.

Recent research topics include

(1) Promoting diversification in the development of a knowledge production and distribution mechanism in the education system (analyzing the relationship between knowledge content and production).

(2) Focusing on problems in on-site teaching instead of conducting macroscopic structural analysis and observations in order to develop a research framework that exhibits both application and practical value.

(3) Using local and practical experiences from nongovernmental voluntary organizations to systematically organize acquired knowledge on localized educational practiced to fill the research gaps in related theories.