She specialises in the history and archaeology of the Silk Road but has also written on human rights and censorship in China.
Whitfield obtained a PhD in historiography from SOAS, University of London in 1995, with a dissertation entitled Politics against the Pen on the Tang dynasty poet Liu Zongyuan.
Whitfield was the first director of the International Dunhuang Project, a position which she held for 24 years, from 1993 until July 2017.
[1] In this capacity she was involved in research and cataloguing of Central Asian manuscripts at the British Library and elsewhere.
[3] Whitfield holds a position as Honorary Associate Professor at the Institute of Archaeology of University College London.