Rate My Professor Kate MacCord

Kate MacCord is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University, affiliated with the Center for Biology and Society and the History and Philosophy of Science program. She teaches history of medicine, history of biology, and biology and society. MacCord earned her PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from Arizona State University in 2017, investigating the history of the intersection of development and evolution within research on mammalian teeth. She previously obtained an MPhil from the University of Cambridge in 2010 as a Gates Cambridge Scholar and a BPhil summa cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh in 2009, with a Certificate in Conceptual Foundations of Medicine.

As a historian and philosopher of biology specializing in regeneration, germline, and cell lineages, MacCord's research uncovers historically entrenched assumptions in scientific practice to advance contemporary biology. Her appointments include McDonnell Foundation Fellow and Program Administrator at the Marine Biological Laboratory since 2017, Instructor at ASU's School of Life Sciences from 2020 to 2022, Adjunct Faculty from 2017 to 2019, and Project Coordinator at the Center for Biology and Society from 2013 to 2017. She served as developing editor for Cancer Stem Cells: Philosophy and Therapies (Harvard University Press, 2016). MacCord authored How Does Germline Regenerate? (University of Chicago Press, 2024) and co-authored What is Regeneration? with Jane Maienschein (University of Chicago Press, 2022). Select peer-reviewed publications include “Let’s Talk About Sex…Cell Lineages” (Biological Theory, 2025), “Studying Regeneration as a Way of Looking Forward” with Jane Maienschein (Journal of the History of Biology, 2024), “Explaining Regeneration: Cells and Limbs as Complex Living Systems, Learning from History” with Jane Maienschein (Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology, 2021), “The impacts of assumptions on theories of tooth development and evolution at the turn of the nineteenth century” (History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 2019), and “The Dawn of Chelonian Research: Turtles between Comparative Anatomy and Embryology in the 19th Century” with co-authors (Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B, 2015). She has also contributed book chapters such as “The Historiography of Embryology and Developmental Biology” (Springer, 2020). Her honors include the School of Life Sciences Faculty Teaching Award (2021), Fulbright Scholar to Finland (2012–2013), Gates Cambridge Scholarship (2009–2010), and nominations for the History of Science Society Joseph H. Hazen Education Prize (2024), ASU Provost Teaching Award (2024), and CLAS Outstanding Teaching Professor Award (2022, 2023).