Brown is a current Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Lau China Institute at King's College, London, President of the Kent Archeological Society,[3] and Associate Fellow on the Asia Pacific programme at Chatham House.

[4] From 2012 to 2015, he was a Professor of Chinese Politics and Director of the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, and from 1998 to 2005, he worked at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office as First Secretary of the Embassy of the United Kingdom, Beijing from 2000 to 2003, and then as Head of the Indonesia, Philippine and East Timor Section from 2003 to 2005.

To try to explain this, he has resisted reliance on faction theories, looking at more complex ideas around varying kinds of networks in Chinese society, and the ways that politicians within the Communist system recruit different levels of support.

His initial interest was in the role of the Cultural Revolution, in particular in the Inner Mongolian area of the People's Republic, and the ways in which a national campaign was adapted to the specific ethnic and social situation in this region.

He has also published work academically on the uses of language and its relationship to institutions and power structures in China, and in 2017 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.