James Leibold is our leading researcher in Asian studies and history
James Leibold from La Trobe University is Australia’s top researcher in Asian Studies and history.
A childhood fascination with Chinese written characters led James Leibold on a lifelong journey in which he has documented Uyghur detention camps and human rights abuses in Tibet.
Leibold, who was raised in the US, had his interest sparked by the stories his father – a businessman who travelled to Hong Kong and Taiwan for work – would tell on returning home.
“But I think the drug that really hooked me was Chinese characters,” says the La Trobe University professor, who is named in The Australian’s 2026 Research magazine as the top researcher in the field of Asian studies and history.
“I had dyslexia – I still do – but there was something about Chinese that made it easier for me, because I only had to remember the image.
“I just love the language. Even to this day, there’s nothing I love more than reading Chinese.”
He studied the language at university, eventually completing a PhD in Chinese history and moving to La Trobe University in 2006.
His area of expertise has become China’s nation-building policies, from imperial times to the present-day policies under Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“I’ve looked at how the Han-dominated Chinese state has sought to impose its power and norms over the diverse peoples of the borderlands, and transform their cultures and identities in the image of the Han ethnic majority,” Leibold says.
His work centres on frontier regions such as Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia, as well as what the Chinese Communist Party calls “soul-casting” – a type of brainwashing that erases diversity and dissent.
To varying degrees, state power has been used to suppress minority languages, traditions and religious practices, while encouraging Han Chinese settlement in these border regions, Leibold says.
Under Xi, these policies of “settler colonialism” have been pursued more aggressively, he says.
In 2017, the Chinese government launched a major crackdown on the Uyghur population in Xinjiang, leading to the mass detention of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in prison-style “re-education” camps.
Between 2020 and 2023, Leibold led a team at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute that, using satellite imagery, mapped more than 380 suspected detention centres across Xinjiang.
In addition to the maps, the researchers produced a comprehensive governance chart and six reports detailing human rights abuses in the region, work that attracted international attention and led to policy changes.
“My research has helped to inform the public, lawmakers, media and politicians about the policies and real-world impacts of the Chinese Communist Party’s settler colonial project,” he says.
It is research that has also come at personal cost, as it is no longer safe for him to travel to China and his colleagues and friends have been questioned by security services in China.
“After documenting the Uyghur detention camps and forced labour practices I was denied a visa to China, effectively preventing me from conducting on-the-ground research,” he says.
“I’ve spent more than a decade of my life in China, so it’s a pity. But that’s the price I had to pay for being critical of the party’s policies.”
Leibold stresses that such colonial resettlement and assimilation policies are not unique to China and many Western countries have a history of settler colonialism.
“But modern-day concentration camps are an extreme method of dealing with resistance,” he says.
What troubles him most is what the future holds for minority cultures on the margins of Chinese society.
“I fear that in decades to come, the next generation of Uyghurs or Tibetans will lose their languages, much of their culture, religion and traditions under the current policies,” he says.
