Grace Kao

Grace Kao
ISPS 
Executive Committee

Grace Kao

Title 
IBM Professor of Sociology and Professor of Ethnicity, Race, and Migration (Secondary); Faculty Director; Education Studies; Director, Center for Empirical Research on Stratification and Inequality (CERSI)

Grace Kao is IBM Professor of Sociology; professor of ethnicity, race, and migration; faculty director of education studies; and director of the Center for Empirical Research on Stratification and Inequality (CERSI). She studies race, ethnicity, and immigration as they collectively relate to education and relationships among young people. She also has interests in the effects of migration on young people and has written papers on these topics in Mexico, China, and Spain. More recently, she has developed interests in the sociology of music and in K-Pop in particular. Her most recent book (with Kara Joyner and Kelly Stamper Balistreri) is titled “The Company We Keep: Interracial Friends and Romantic Relationships from Adolescence to Adulthood.” She is a former vice president of the American Sociological Association (ASA) and has served on the boards of the Population Association of America and the Association for Asian American Studies. The earned her Ph.D. and an A.M. from The University of Chicago and an A.B. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Discipline 
Sociology
Area of study 
Immigration