Research Interests: History and philosophy of psychology; history and philosophy of the self; history of the human sciences; intellectual history; racial capitalism; black critical theory; animal studies; environmental history and thought; history and philosophy of civilization; social epistemology.

Kaitlin Smith is a Ph.D student in the Department of History of Science. Most broadly, she is interested in historicizing and complicating scientific discourses that serve as sites of enduring confrontation between expert knowledge and subjugated knowledges of self, place, and world.

Her current scholarly project critically interrogates some of the conceptual foundations of modern psychology and the hitherto unelaborated role of antebellum-era racial capitalism in its discursive formation. This research agenda is informed by Kaitlin’s past training and work as a psychotherapist at the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and in other settings.

Alongside academic scholarship, Kaitlin is also a writer, public humanist, and naturalist pioneering place-based pedagogical approaches that integrate the experiential, embodied, and hyperlocal with the humanistic. This work encompasses an ongoing series of educational events for adult learners and an original ethnobiological research project titled “The Storied Grounds Project: An Ethnobiology of Multicultural Boston,” delivered in collaboration with Mass Audubon’s Boston Nature Center.

Previous Degrees:

B.A. Swarthmore College, Sociology and Anthropology, Black Studies
M.S.W. Smith College, Clinical Social Work