His books constitute a series of micro-studies which trace the contingent ways in which ideas, objects and institutions acquire global dimensions and are locally transformed in the specific case of modern China. In analysing topics such as gender, sexuality, 'race', eugenics, drugs, crime and punishment from a China-centered perspective based on extensive research on original primary sources, he has undermined many of the assumptions made in the humanities about the 'imposed' nature of the modern world, showing how elites and ordinary people alike were often keen to participate in key aspects of modernity and use them to suit their own perceived needs. These many acts of appropriation drive cultural diversification, even if the framework of reference is increasingly global. As a global community in the twenty-first century, we share a common world, although the ways in which this world is interpreted, inflected and shaped varies enormously from place to place: it is the emergence of this global community which is the focus of Frank Dikötter's work, including both the increased circulation of goods, ideas and people and the darker side of globalisation such as racism and sexism. His work also contributes to a number of longstanding debates about the making and breaking of individual freedoms, providing fresh historical perspectives from a non-European context on the incompatibility of racism with liberalism, the entrenched forms of discrimination against women and disabled people, the effects of state punishment in the form of the prison and the consequences of drug prohibition. His present research looks at the human consequences of forced collectivisation.