Frank Dikötter is the Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong and Professor of the Modern History of China on leave from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
Born in the Netherlands in 1961, he was educated in Switzerland and graduated from the University of Geneva with a Double Major in History and Russian. After two years in the People’s Republic of China, he moved to London where he obtained his PhD in History from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in 1990. He stayed at SOAS as British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow and as Wellcome Research Fellow before being promoted to a personal chair as Professor of the Modern History of China in 2002. His research and writing has been funded by over 1.5 US$ million in grants from various foundations, including, in Britain, the Wellcome Trust, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, The Economic and Social Research Council and, in Hong Kong, the Research Grants Council and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation.
Books in order of publication:
The Discourse of Race in Modern China – 1992
Narcotic Culture: A History of Drugs in China – 2004
The Age of Openness: China before Mao – 2008
Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62 – 2010
The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957 – 2013
The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History, 1962-1976 – 2016
How to Be a Dictator: The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century – 2019
China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower – 2022
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