Maura Dykstra

Maura Dykstra is a historian specializing in late imperial China, affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) in Berlin. She earned her PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2014 and has held prestigious fellowships at institutions such as East China Normal University, the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History, Harvard University, the University of Tokyo, and the National Library of Taipei.

Her research focuses on the Qing bureaucratic system and the archival technologies employed by the Manchu state to govern officials and localities. Dykstra's current manuscript project, Empire of Routine: The Unexpected Administrative Revolution of the Eighteenth Century Qing State, explores the intersection of legal and bureaucratic discipline in late imperial governance. She contributes to the Institute's broader engagement with knowledge systems, artifacts, and transnational historical studies.