Dr. Steve MA is an expert in the history of academia. He holds multiple degrees in history, Chinese literature, and communication studies. His work examines how the evolution of academic disciplines reflects changes in human knowledge, with the aim of deepening our understanding of ourselves. His current work includes a book manuscript on the formation of the concept of “social sciences” during the development of modern Chinese historiography, and a project funded by the Research Grants Council explores digital humanities methodologies. By examining the boundaries between the humanities and the sciences, his work addresses philosophical topics such as subjectivity, experience, and existence.
Dr. MA has extensive experience in the higher education sector, with particular insight into Hong Kong’s self-financing higher education sector. He has served in both administrative and teaching roles at institutions, such as Chu Hai College of Higher Education (Hong Kong), United International College (Mainland China), and Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). He was the principal organizer of the “Corpus and Digital Humanities Summer College,” the leading digital humanities summer school in Asia. He has also offered exhibition planning and consulting services to various private museums and cultural companies.
Dr. MA also has an outstanding record of collaborative research and has been awarded several important grants. Based on his undergraduate thesis, his Key Project of Philosophy and Social Science Research in Colleges and Universities in Jiangsu Province proposal was successfully approved, which is a top-tier provincial grant scheme. In 2025, when he was still a PhD candidate, he was awarded a General Research Fund grant through collaboration with another professor. He also served as a contributing editor for Overview of Historical Geography of China, widely recognized as China’s most influential textbook on historical geography. He was also the editor of Asian Studies (formerly overseas CSSCI) and Hong Kong Humanities.
Research Interests
History of Scholarship, Intellectual History of China, Historical Geography, Pre-Qin and Han Dynasty Texts, Digital Humanities
Teaching
HUMA 1411 Inside Chinese Documents and Archives: Methods and Perspectives
HUMA 1412 China Through Time and Space: Chinese Historical Geography
HUMA 1673 Art and Digital Culture
HUMA 2412 Exploring Text at Scale: Natural Language Processing and Digital Humanities
HUMA 5630 Digital Humanities: Text Mining
Representative Publications
Ma, Haonan. 2025. “The Re-discussion of Xiaru.” Institute for Communication Studies of Chinese Culture Newsletter, no. 6: 26-31.
Ma, Haonan. 2025. “The Narrative of ‘Modernity’ in the Intellectual History of China and Its Crisis.” Twenty-First Century, no. 208: 92–106.
Ma Haonan. 2024. " A Comparative Study on Three Annotations of Fupu." International Sinology Newsletter, no. 2: 371–380.
Ma, Haonan. 2023. “A Study on the Urban Pattern of Liaoshangjing.” In Yueying Wanchuan, edited by Zhang L., 172–192. Phoenix Publishing & Media Group.
Ma Haonan. 2023. "Pattern, Form, and Space: A Study of Zhongxingfu" Xixia Studies, no. 4: 80–89.