Haofeng Ma is a PhD Candidate in Political Science. Before joining the University of Iowa in 2019, he got his bachelor’s and master's degrees from two Chinese universities.  

Haofeng’s major research areas are comparative politics and political methodology, focusing in particular on the issues of public opinion, political linguistics, race and ethnicity, and political geography. More specifically, he explores how the language uses of people and state language policies cause consequences to individual and collective identities, mass attitudes, and ethnic and socioeconomic inequalities. Methodologically, he adopts a variety of advanced quantitative methods, such as hierarchical models, spatial autoregressive models, network analysis, and Geographic Information Science (GIS) techniques in his studies. 

Along with his research for the PhD in Political Science, Haofeng is also working towards an MS in Informatics (Geoinformatics) in the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Geographical and Sustainability Sciences at the University.