The Department has a strong faculty whose research and teaching cover a wide range of fields. Geographically, they span Taiwan, China, Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East, as well as Greece, Rome, Britain, France, Ireland, Germany, and more.

Within Chinese history, expertise ranges across the pre-Qin, Wei–Jin, Song–Yuan, Ming–Qing, and Republican periods; in Taiwan history, the focus is on economic, commercial, art, literary, cultural, and colonial history.

In terms of specialized and thematic approaches, the Department's work encompasses economic history, social history, religious history (Buddhism, Daoism, Christianity, and Islam), intellectual history, art history, gender history, historiophoty (history in film and television), oral history, history education, historical theory, public history, ecological history, the history of human–animal relations, the history of Western science and technology, the history of medicine, as well as the history of care and smart humanities.