Dr Xiao Ma

I am a part-time Visiting Lecturer at the University of Westminster. My research interests include ‘race’ and space, Chinese diasporas, migration-related heritage studies, digital humanities, and social justice.

I obtained my PhD in Heritage and Migration from the University of Westminster in 2025. My PhD project was funded by the Quintin Hogg Research Studentship. It investigated the cultural complexities of London’s Chinatown through critically examining the notion and practice of Chinatown heritage in global London. Through analysing how different Londoners create meanings about Chinatown, my research challenged the homogenising portrait of Chinatown as a bounded urban space defined by fixed ethnic differences. The title of my PhD thesis is 'Everyday Heritage, Spatio-temporal Dynamics and Place-making: Rethinking the Social Production of London’s Chinatown on the Backdrop of COVID-19'.

In 2025, I worked as a Postdoctoral Research Assistant at Bournemouth University and Middlesex University, UK. At Bournemouth University, I contributed to the BA/Leverhulme-funded project, 'Fight against racism towards the East and Southeast Asian community: Leveraging TikTok.' At Middlesex University, I contributed to the HEIF-funded project, 'Invisible Immigrant Food Entrepreneurs.' 

Outside academic research, I worked as a journalist and wrote news stories on UK art, culture, and education from 2013 to 2015. Between 2016 and 2024, I worked for China Exchange, a UK-registered charity that created opportunities for the general public in the UK to learn about contemporary China, Chinese culture, London’s Chinatown, and the complex relationships between them. As Cultural Projects Manager and Researcher, I co-produced six major heritage projects about London’s Chinatown, all of which centred on a community co-creation approach. These grant-funded projects included The Making of Chinatown oral history project and exhibition, Made in Chinatown artist residency, and Chinatown Stories Walking Tours. 

I have also collaborated with the UK Web Archive, curating the 'Chinese in the UK' Special Collection and the 'East and Southeast Asians in the UK' Special Collection.

Teaching 

My teaching is informed by my research on heritage, urban space, migration, intersectional inequalities, and social media, and is shaped by a commitment to inclusive, critically engaged, and practice-based learning. I have contributed to the following modules:

• Internet Cultures
• The Chinese World and the Word
• London Lives: Migrant London
• People and Things on the Move: Identity, Place and Memory in and across Diasporic Spaces

Publications 

Huc-Hepher, S. and Ma, X. (2025) ‘The Trouble with Community: Constructing, Deconstructing and Reconstructing Transnational “Community” Micro-archives’, in S. Aasman, A. Ben-David and N. Brügger (eds) The Routledge Companion to Transnational Web Archive Studies. London: Routledge, pp.273-289 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003398998-22. 

Ma, X. (2024) ‘Contesting Everyday (Food) Heritage in London’s Chinatown’, in C. Wang and T. Lamb (eds) Negotiating Identities, Language and Migration in Global London: Bridging Borders, Creating Spaces. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, pp.235-262. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781788927772-015.

Lam, D., Ma, X., Hsieh, N. and Cheung Judge, R. (2024) The Growth in ESEA Representation: Pitfalls, Potentials, and Politics. ESEA Online Community Hub.

For details of all my research outputs, visit my WestminsterResearch profile.