She holds a PhD in History and is a researcher. She has long been engaged in world history, world ethnic issues and national theory research. She served in the Department of History at Northwest Normal University, the Department of History at Northwest University for Nationalities, the Department of History at Lanzhou University, and the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She is the author of such monographs as the History of Western Historiography, Inter-ethno-national Politics and the Nation-state, Inter-ethnic Politics: Theory and Practice in the Twentieth Century and World Peoples: Civilization and Culture, and published the translation The Civic and the Tribal State: The State, Ethnicity, and the Multiethnic State.