Regan Murphy Kao

As the Director of the East Asia Library, I oversee all aspects of the library, including access services, collection development, special collections and technical services for Chinese, Japanese, Korean and English-language materials on East Asia. I started at Stanford Libraries as the Japanese Studies Librarian in 2012 and became the Head of Special Collections a few years later. Before joining Stanford, I completed a postdoctoral fellowship at U.C. Berkeley and received a PhD from Harvard with research focused on debates over the intersection of language, history and ritual in 18th century Japan. My love of libraries began during a formative year working at Starr East Asia Library in New York City soon after graduating from Columbia with a B.A. in East Asian Studies.