Lucio de Sousa is Co-Director of GHN and Associate Professor at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. He was Research Associate - University of Evora (Portugal) - NICPRI – Centre of Research in Political Science and International Relations and FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia) Post-Doctoral Fellow.

He obtained his PhD in Asian Studies at University of Oporto in 2007. His primary field of research is the slave trade. The aim of his research is to shed light on the purchase and sale of Asian slaves and with all possible accuracy, to reconstruct the economic reality experienced by Europeans in the seas of China, as well as their networks of slaves from 1520 to 1620.

He is the author of The Early European Presence in China, Japan, The Philippines and Southeast Asia, (1555-1590) - The Life of Bartolomeu Landeiro, Macao Foundation, Macao, December 2010. Instead of concentrating on the presence of the first Europeans in China placed against the background of the official trade regulated by the Portuguese Crown, his research is focused on the private trade undertaken by many unknown merchants who played a fundamental role in the European economic expansion of the sixteenth century in Asia/Southeast Asia.

He is also the editor of The Portuguese and Japan (16th and 17th centuries), University of Tokyo, CEPESA, Lisbon, 2005.