Yuan-Heng Mao

• E-mail: yuanheng.mao@iisg.nl
• Department: Research

Yuan-Heng Mao is a socio-cultural historian of later imperial China. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher based at the International Institute of Social History, where he is a member of the NWO project “The Lives and Afterlives of Imperial Material Infrastructure in Southeastern China.” He received his Ph.D. from the History and East Asian Languages Program at Harvard University in 2024. His research explores how different local societies in imperial China were connected to one another through various networks, whether material, social, or cultural. This focus leads him to examine diverse social actors, their ways of establishing networks, and the meaning of network building for them. Having participated in DH projects in Taiwan and the United States, he is interested in experimenting with digital methods in historical research, especially social network analysis. His publication can be found in the Journal of Song-Yuan Studies. His other writings include short pieces for the public, such as “Becoming an Influencer in 13th Century China.”