Peterson received his training as a sinologist from D. C. Lau and A. C. Graham in London in the 1960s.
Peterson's early works focus on prominent Chinese intellectual figures in the seventeenth century such as Gu Yanwu and Fang Yizhi by placing their writings in the context of new trends of Neo-Confucian philosophy after Wang Yangming as well as the Ming-Qing transition.
[3] In the 1980s, he published some of his most influential works in the Sinology circle, including his original annotation on the classical Chinese text The Book of Change, and a series of seminal papers on the Jesuit missionaries and their role in facilitating interactions of scientific knowledges between the East and West in early modern global history.
Later, he became an important contributor and editor of the renowned The Cambridge History of China.
He was the head editor of its two-part volume 9 on history of the first half of the Qing dynasty, published in 2002 and 2016, respectively.