Ma, Ji 马季

The University of Texas at Austin, LBJ School of Public Affairs

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  • Office hour: Tue 2pm–4pm (2025 spring).
  • Office: SRH3.324, +1-512-232-4240
  • Email: [email protected]

My name is Ji MA (马季; first name pronounces “G”), Assistant Professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. I’m also an affiliated faculty member of the Center for East Asian Studies and the School of Information at UT Austin.

I focus on the nexus of technology and society through three interrelated research streams: (1) using data and algorithms to bring advanced technologies and methods into the public and nonprofit sectors, equipping scholars and practitioners with cutting‑edge tools to address social issues; (2) promoting interdisciplinary and equitable knowledge production for policymaking; and (3) analyzing the resilience and evolution of civil society in restrictive contexts via novel computational methods, thereby generating new theoretical perspectives and research avenues. My publications appear in leading journals across a broad range of disciplines, including public administration and policy, nonprofit studies, sociology, political science, and data science.

In my spare time, I enjoy building open-source projects, tasting tea and hiking with family and friends, and practicing Olympic Recurve.


selected publications

2025

  1. Steering Prosocial AI Agents: Computational Basis of LLM’s Decision Making in Social Simulation
    Ji Ma
    Apr 2025
  2. Why do some academic articles receive more citations from policy communities?
    Ji Ma and Yuan (Daniel) Cheng
    Public Administration Review, Apr 2025

2024

  1. Consensus Formation in Nonprofit and Philanthropic Studies: Networks, Reputation, and Gender
    Ji Ma and René Bekkers
    Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Feb 2024
  2. Neutral, Non-Disruptive, and Native: Why Do Chinese Nonprofit Scholars Cite English Articles?
    Ji Ma
    Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Aug 2024
  3. Can Machines Think Like Humans? A Behavioral Evaluation of LLM-Agents in Dictator Games
    Ji Ma
    Dec 2024

2023

  1. Computational Social Science for Nonprofit Studies: Developing a Toolbox and Knowledge Base for the Field
    Ji Ma, Islam Akef Ebeid, Arjen Wit, and 4 more authors
    VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, Feb 2023
  2. How Does an Authoritarian State Co-opt Its Social Scientists Studying Civil Society?
    Ji Ma
    VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, Aug 2023

2021

  1. Automated Coding Using Machine Learning and Remapping the U.S. Nonprofit Sector: A Guide and Benchmark
    Ji Ma
    Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Jun 2021

2018

  1. A Century of Nonprofit Studies: Scaling the Knowledge of the Field
    Ji Ma and Sara Konrath
    VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, Dec 2018
  2. State power and elite autonomy in a networked civil society: The board interlocking of Chinese non-profits
    Ji Ma and Simon DeDeo
    Social Networks, Jul 2018

2017

  1. The research infrastructure of Chinese foundations, a database for Chinese civil society studies
    Ji Ma, Qun Wang, Chao Dong, and 1 more author
    Scientific Data, Jul 2017