Laura Hostetler is a professor in the Department of History in the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her principal research interests are the history of cartography, empire, and encounters between Europe and Asia.[1] She belongs to the school of thought known as the New Qing History. Her book, Qing Colonial Enterprise: Ethnography and Cartography in Early Modern China, demonstrates how the Qing dynasty pursued its imperial ambitions by using cartography and ethnography.[2]
In 1995 she received her Ph.D. in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at University of Pennsylvania, where she studied with Susan Naquin.[citation needed]
From 2010 to 2014, Hostetler was the Chair of the UIC Department of History.[3]
Hostetler is also a Council Member for the American Historical Association.[4]