Keitaro Okura
Biography
Keitaro Okura is the SRS Assistant Professor of Sociology and International and Public Affairs at Brown University. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Yale University. His research spans immigration, race and ethnicity, education, politics, and social psychology, with an overarching focus on the boundaries of national and ethnoracial group membership in the United States. He works primarily with quantitative methods and frequently collects original descriptive and experimental survey data. His work has appeared in leading journals and has received numerous awards from major professional associations. His research has been supported by the Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Rapoport Family Foundation, and the ASA/NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant.
Research
Okura’s research examines the social and symbolic boundaries of national and ethnoracial membership in the United States. In one line of study, he investigates how Americans define the boundaries of “Americanness,” particularly how U.S. national membership is conceptualized along racial and political dimensions. His ongoing work explores intra-racial group dynamics, analyzing how Latino and Asian Americans define membership within their own ethnoracial groups and negotiate the boundaries of linked fate.
Publications
Okura, Keitaro. 2026. “Red and Blue Immigrants: Political (Mis)Alignment, Immigration Attitudes, and the Boundaries of American National Inclusion.” American Journal of Sociology 131(4):729-772.
Shu, Matthew, Daniel Karell, Keitaro Okura, and Thomas Davidson. 2026. “How Latent and Prompting Biases in AI-Generated Historical Narratives Influence Opinions.” PNAS Nexus 5(3):pgag022.
Zang, Emma, Keitaro Okura, and Melissa Tian. 2025. “Sex-Selective Abortion Bans and the Birth Outcomes of Asian Immigrants.” Social Science & Medicine 383:118442.
Benedek, Kurdi, Keitaro Okura, Eric Hehman, and Melissa J. Ferguson. 2025. “Cognitive Underpinnings and Ecological Correlates of Implicit Bias Against Non-Americans in the United States.” Scientific Reports 15:15191.
Okura, Keitaro, Amy Hsin, and Sofya Aptekar. 2025. “Heterogeneous Effects of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) on Undocumented College Students’ Educational Outcomes.” International Migration Review 59(1):325-341.