Founded in 1963 as the Department of Chinese Studies, over the years we have expanded to incorporate Japanese Studies, Mongolian Studies, Asia Pacific Studies, and most recently Thai and South East Asian Studies.

Our Department was set up with a deliberately modern bias, unlike the more traditional departments that emphasise classical studies. We have around 25 academic members of staff that include several native speakers of Chinese, Japanese, Mongolian and Thai. Our research activity includes work in the social sciences, humanities, language and literature.

In the UK's 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), the Department was ranked fourth out of the 10 centres that submitted applications. Of the 18 staff members that were submitted to the 2008 RAE (the joint third highest number in the UK), 85 percent of the publications were rated as internationally recognised, and around half achieving international excellence.

We currently teach around 450 undergraduate and 50 postgraduate students. We are a very dynamic and vibrant scholarly community. Our Department is constantly looking to develop new innovative teaching, cutting-edge research and organising various events and activities that enrich the student's learning experience here at Leeds.

History of the Department

Owen Lattimore with Chiang Kai-shek in Chongqing in 1941

The Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Leeds was originally established as the Department of Chinese Studies following the presentation of the Hayter Report in 1961 to the British Government. This report recommended a 10-year programme of government funding to expand area studies in the United Kingdom. Specifically, this recommended a shift from 'classical' studies to 'modern' studies as well as diversifying funding away from the older regional study centres at Oxford, Cambridge and London universities that were previously established by the Scarborough Report of 1947.

The Department's first cohort of students, in 1964. Professor Owen Lattimore is 3rd row up, 2nd from right.

In Yorkshire, three centres were established, these being Chinese Studies at the University of Leeds, Japanese Studies at the University of Sheffield, and South East Asian Studies at the University of Hull. Special funds became available the following year in 1962 and the University of Leeds invited the Owen Lattimore as its first Professor of Chinese. Lattimore was a British educated American scholar and frontier explorer. During World War Two, he was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s appointed personal political adviser to the Chinese wartime leader Chiang Kai-shek, and later the Director of Pacific Operations in the Office of War Information in San Francisco.

Owen Lattimore - who was fluent in Chinese, Mongolian, Russian and French - was teaching international relations at John Hopkins University at the time. He made the move to England in 1963 to establish the first modern Chinese Studies department in the United Kingdom with the personal encouragement, support and endorsement of the greatest China scholars of his time. These include, Joseph Needham of Cambridge University, Dennis Twitchett of London University, John King Fairbank of Harvard University and Arthur F. Wright of Yale University. He not only brought with him his vast collection of Asian studies books for the Brotherton Library and his personal ideas of how to teach modern Chinese studies, he also actively promoted the specific study of Mongolia. Mongolian Studies was officially established in 1972 and has been taught as a unique subject at Leeds ever since.

HRH Duchess of Kent talking with students at Leeds in 1983.

Japanese Studies was added in 1990 and the Department changed its name from Chinese Studies to East Asian Studies to reflect its broader East Asian sphere of activity. In 2003, the Centre for South East Asian Studies at the University of Hull was moved to Leeds to became a constituent part of the Department. In 2006, the Department of East Asian Studies at Leeds and the School of East Asian Studies at Sheffield together with Leeds University Business School collaborated to form the White Rose East Asia Centre (WREAC), that comprises the National Institute of Chinese Studies and the National Institute of Japanese Studies.

WREAC provides the basis for undertaking broader collaborative research in East Asian Studies, as well as advanced research and language training in Chinese and Japanese Studies as part of the latest government drive to strengthen the United Kingdom's specialised research capacity in these study areas. Through WREAC and also through the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN), the Department is reaching out and collaborating with partners in East Asia, Europe and globally.