Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of History, Northern Arizona University
Director of Asian Studies and Director of Graduate Studies at Northern Arizona University

John Kong-Cheung Leung attended CUHK (New Asia College) in 1969-1971, majoring in History. He transferred to Northwestern University (Illinois) in the United States in 1971, and subsequently received his B.A. (History) from Northwestern in 1973, and his M.A. (1977) and Ph.D. (1982) from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. He received the Artemis and Martha Joukowsky Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Asian Studies and taught as a post-doctoral fellow at Brown University. He has also taught at Babson College (Massachusetts) and for the last sixteen years he has been teaching in the History Department of Northern Arizona University, where he is currently Associate Professor of Asian History. He has also served as Chair of the Department of History, Director of Asian Studies and Director of Graduate Studies at Northern Arizona University.

In his tenure as chair of the History Department, he developed and promoted the department's Global History curriculum. He has published two edited volumes on the writings of Mao Zedong's Writings, special issues of the journal Chinese law and Government, and articles in Historical Dictionary of the Chinese Revolution and Political Leaders of Modern China. Currently he is conducting research on the history of women's education in early-twentieth century China, and is anticipating the completion of several articles as well as a full manuscript on the subject in the next two years.

John has been active in promoting Asian-American social and political interests and is serving on the Asian-American Advisory Council to Governor Janet Napolitano of the state of Arizona, the United States. He is also currently very much involved in promoting Sino-American educational exchange for Northern Arizona University. He has served as president of the Western Conference of the Association For Asian Studies (USA) and currently serves on the UCC's Board For Homeland Ministries for over a decade. John and his spouse Janet live in Flagstaff, Arizona. They have two grown children, Jennifer and Jonathan (keeping the initials JL with the family.) John's hobbies are books (books, and more books), classical music, painting, and photography. After a much too long hiatus, he recently resumed playing badminton, a sport in which for too brief a time he once played on New Asia College's varsity team.