Kyoko Sato is Associate Director of the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at Stanford University and Senior Researcher on the Harvard STS Program’s project, “The Fukushima Disaster and the Cultural Politics of Nuclear Power in the United States and Japan”(2013-2016). The project is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, with Sheila Jasanoff as the Principal Investigator, and explores how postwar nuclear governance evolved in Japan and the United States, as well as the impact of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

More generally, her research focuses on how culture and politics intersect in the development of sociotechnical systems in different national contexts. Her previous work examined the intersection of cultural meaning, policy frameworks, and politics in the development of genetically modified food in Japan, France, and the United States.

Kyoko received her Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University, M.A. in journalism from New York University, and B.A. in English from the University of Tokyo. She was a postdoctoral associate at the Institute for the Social Sciences at Cornell University and taught social theory as a lecturer in the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies at Harvard University.