Dr Kathy Mak

Dr. Kathy Mak serves as Assistant Professor at the Department of Chinese History and Culture at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where she brings expertise in Chinese art history and visual culture. Her academic credentials include a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Philosophy from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, followed by a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research portfolio focuses on the relationship between Chinese art and space, particularly examining landscape representation in the contexts of nation-building, environmental imagination, and migration in post-war Chinese worlds. Her doctoral research made significant contributions to understanding how landscape art served as a site for political imagining during China's "Seventeen Years Period" (1949-1966), investigating the connections between landscape representation and political interpretation across various visual media. As WIE Coordinator at PolyU, she actively engages in developing student internship opportunities while continuing her research on first-generation modern artists of Hong Kong in a global context. Her work bridges traditional Chinese art history with contemporary cultural studies, examining how spatial representation in art influences viewers' conceptions and interpretations of national identity.