Caroline Kao

Caroline Kao is a Research Associate at Harvard Kennedy School’s Institutional Antiracism and Accountability (IARA) Project, currently working on the Truth, Reconciliation, Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) Archival Research Project, a collaboration with the American Medical Association (AMA).

Caroline’s research critically examines how medical, scientific, and technical discourses perpetuate colonial and patriarchal legacies in contemporary society. Her current focus explores the intersection of organized medicine with racial capitalism, U.S. imperialism, and settler colonialism. Through the TRHT project, Caroline investigates the roots of institutional racism within U.S. medicine, in order to address contemporary racial health disparities and foster more equitable futures.

Prior to joining the Ash Center, Caroline conducted innovative ethnographic research on the formation of social hierarchies and their links to financial value within the California digital startup economy. Supported by the National Science Foundation, this research shed new light on how everyday practices, narratives, and spatial configurations of technology companies recruit and reproduce existing social inequalities. She has taught courses on critical media studies, anthropology, and gender/sexuality studies at Northeastern University, Stanford University, and the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she also received her Ph.D. in Anthropology. Her background as a domestic workers’ rights and labor organizer complements her academic expertise, enriching her approach to institutional change and the study of racism within the history of organized medicine.