I am a historian of science and modern East Asia, currently completing a PhD at the University of Zurich. I am also a visiting research fellow at Waseda University until September 2026.
My dissertation began with a fairly simple problem. Japanese agricultural science is usually treated as one more Western import: new knowledge arrived, experts learned it, and the state put it to work. But the people who built agricultural schools, experiment stations, and colonial settlements did not think they were starting from scratch. They used modern science to revive much older arguments about good government, productive land, and the proper relation between rulers and cultivators.
A Confucian Science follows this unlikely project from Hokkaido to colonial Taiwan and into the postwar period. It is a history of science and empire, but also of failed farms, reluctant settlers, and the stubborn gap between what officials planned and what people actually did.
My publications, CV, and a longer description of the project are available on this site. I can be reached at scott.ma@uzh.ch.
My dissertation began with a fairly simple problem. Japanese agricultural science is usually treated as one more Western import: new knowledge arrived, experts learned it, and the state put it to work. But the people who built agricultural schools, experiment stations, and colonial settlements did not think they were starting from scratch. They used modern science to revive much older arguments about good government, productive land, and the proper relation between rulers and cultivators.
A Confucian Science follows this unlikely project from Hokkaido to colonial Taiwan and into the postwar period. It is a history of science and empire, but also of failed farms, reluctant settlers, and the stubborn gap between what officials planned and what people actually did.
My publications, CV, and a longer description of the project are available on this site. I can be reached at scott.ma@uzh.ch.