Cameron Campbell graduated with honours from Caltech in 1989, receiving bachelor’s degrees in Engineering and Applied Science and in History. After receiving his PhD in sociology and demography from the University of Pennsylvania in 1995, he joined the Department of Sociology at UCLA. From 2005, he was full professor there. He moved from UCLA to the HKUST Division of Social Science 2013 and was named a Chair Professor in 2021. He has served in a variety of administrative roles in his School and Division. His research focuses on family, population, inequality, and stratification, especially in historical China and in comparative perspective.

With collaborators and students in the Lee-Campbell group, he is conducting a study of 19th century Chinese educational and political elites based on analysis of databases of civil and exam degree holders that he and his collaborators have constructed from historical sources. He has also published on family, kinship, inequality, and demographic behaviour in historical China and in comparative perspective. His research has been supported by grants from the United States National Institutes of Health and the Hong Kong Research Grants Council. 

He is the co-author of four books, including Fate and Fortune in Rural China (Cambridge 1997) and Life under Pressure: Mortality and Living Standards in Europe and Asia 1700-1900 (MIT Press 2004). His articles have appeared in flagship journals such as American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, and Demography.

He has been named a Guggenheim Fellow (2004), a Chang Jiang Scholar (2017), and a Fellow of the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (2022).