Dr. Joseba Estevez is a social anthropologist and Research Assistant Professor in the Asian Religious Connections (ASIAR) cluster at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (HKIHSS), The University of Hong Kong. His project, Conquering Mountains, Taming Demons: The Ritual Roles of the Lanten Yao Priests and Masters, received the 2024 Frobenius Research Award, a major distinction for anthropological scholarship in the German-speaking world. Drawing on more than a decade of immersive anthropological fieldwork in Luang Namtha Province, northern Laos, this research examines the roles of Daoist ritual specialists within Lanten Yao (Mun) communities.

Since 2023, Estevez has expanded his research to study social transformation and cultural resilience across the borderlands of Southwest China and mainland Southeast Asia. He investigates how major infrastructural developments—including the Laos–China Railway, smart cities, special economic zones, and green-energy projects—reshape local livelihoods, cultural practices, and relationships with land. His work contributes to critical debates on heritage, community, infrastructure, and sustainable development.

Estevez leads the international Yao Dao Project, working towards the establishment of a reference centre for Yao Daoist studies. He also serves as Deputy Director of the Global Society and Sustainability Lab (GSSL) and is a core member of the Global China Local Cultures initiative.

Digital heritage preservation is central to his research. His latest initiative, SacredHongKong.hk, brings ethnographic research into dialogue with digital technologies to explore Hong Kong’s religious landscapes, visualize heritage, and document the social lives of ritual objects. He has directed several major preservation projects, including the Digital Library of the Lanten Textual Heritage (Endangered Archives Programme, British Library, 2015–2021), The Lanten Oral Stories (BEQUAL, EU and Australian Aid, 2017–2021), and the ongoing Lanten Digital Archive, a multimedia repository of Lanten cultural practices developed with Creative Seven Arts (EU, HKU, 2018–present). His expertise in digitizing Daoist manuscripts has informed preservation efforts involving major collections in Heidelberg, Leiden, and Hong Kong. Building on this work, he is collaborating with Lanten communities in Laos to establish a unified Daoist canon and produce standardized, print-ready editions that support the intergenerational transmission of ritual knowledge.

Alongside these initiatives, Estevez is developing advanced optical character recognition (OCR) workflows and AI-assisted analytical tools tailored to non-standard Daoist scripts. These support large-scale transcription, semantic annotation, and cross-textual analysis while maintaining close attention to community interpretations, ritual functions, and the continuing use of manuscripts within living traditions. His work in forensic reconstruction and advanced digitization has contributed to the preservation of more than 3,000 manuscripts. His research also encompasses Daoist material culture, including embroidered ritual robes and carved wooden masks, implements, and weapons.

Through his collaboration with the University of Hamburg’s Cluster of Excellence Understanding Written Artefacts (2019–present), Estevez traces networks of Daoist manuscript exchange across the Southeast Asian Massif during the nineteenth century. He also examines the role of German sinology in shaping Yao studies from the late Qing through the Republican period (c. 1850–1949). Since 2022, he has collaborated with Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou and the Chinese Folklore Resources Overseas project to digitize Yao manuscripts and prepare a dedicated publication series featuring facsimiles from private collections in Europe and Asia.