James Jupp spent the first twenty-two years of his life in Croydon, England. With an early interest in politics, he entered the London School of Economics in 1951, leaving in 1956 with a masters degree after completing a thesis on England's radical left between the wars. He subsequently travelled to Australia, and, after working at various jobs, he secured a lectureship in political science at the University of Melbourne.
With a socialist ideology, he was active in campus politics and founded Dissent in 1961, a political and cultural affairs magazine that ran until 1978. The first issue of Dissent contained an article on immigration, a subject that would become one of Jupp's main areas of interest. Jupp pursued research on political parties and wrote widely on Victorian politics, consolidating a growing international reputation.
In 1966, Jupp took up a position at the University of York. He completed his PhD at the University of London in 1975 and worked for two years at the University of Waterloo in Canada. In 1978, Jupp returned to Australia to work at the University of Canberra. He continued his research on immigration issues and produced many articles and books on Australian multiculturalism, including the Bicentennial Encyclopedia of the Australian People (1988). In 1988 he was appointed founding director of the Centre for Immigration and Multicultural studies at the Australian National University.
