Sidney X. Lu is Associate Professor and the Annette and Hugh Gragg Chair of Transnational Asian Studies at Rice University. He is a social and cultural historian of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Japan and China, with research interests in the areas of migration, settler colonialism, gender, race, and trans-Pacific connections. He earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of Pennsylvania.

His first book, The Making of Japanese Settler Colonialism: Malthusianism and Trans-Pacific Migration, 1868-1961, published by Cambridge University Press in 2019, is a study of the relationship among Malthusianism, emigration, and colonial expansion in the history of modern Japan. His new book, Collaborative Settler Colonialism: Japanese Migration to Brazil in the Age of Empires, is forthcoming from the University of California Press in 2025, that examines the historical interactions and convergence between Japan and Brazil, and between East Asia and Latin America more broadly, in the aspect of settler colonialism. He is current working on the third book-length project that examines the history of Sino-Japanese colonial struggles in Southeast Asia.

In addition, he has co-edited the book, Japanese Empire and Latin America, published by University of Hawaii Press in 2023, which provides a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between Japanese migration and capital exportation to Latin America and the rise and fall of the Japanese empire Asia. He is also the author of several refereed articles that appear in Journal of Asian Studies, positions: asia critique, Journal of Global History, Journal of World History, and Japanese Studies. For a detailed description of his research and publications, please see BOOKS and ARTICLES.

He is a coeditor of the book series Between Asias and Americas at University of Pittsburgh Press, which bridges Asian studies with American studies (conceived hemispherically to include Latin American studies and Asian American studies).

He is the PI and faculty mentor of the digital exhibition, History of Japanese Farmers in Texas, which received the Trailblazer Award of Texas Digital Library.

He offers a variety of courses across the disciplines of humanities and social sciences, related to the histories, societies, and cultures of Japan and East Asia, as well as Asian American studies. For a detailed description of his teaching approaches and courses, please see TEACHING.