Bio

Dr. Karey Harwood is Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at NC State and Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGS) in the Department of Integrative Humanities and Social Sciences (IHSS). She currently serves as Head of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies and as a Park Faculty Scholar for the Park Class of 2026. She was the Coordinator of WGS from 2015 to 2022. Dr. Harwood teaches courses at the intersection of Religious Studies, Philosophy, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She won the Outstanding Teacher Award in 2010 and the Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Professor award in 2019 and is a member of the NC State Academy of Outstanding Teachers. She is also an affiliated faculty member of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center.

She received her Ph.D. in 2003 from Emory University, where she studied religious ethics and the sociology of religion and morality and was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Grant in Women’s Health. The focus of her research has been primarily in biomedical ethics and reproductive technologies. Her first book, The Infertility Treadmill: Feminist Ethics, Personal Choice, and the Use of Reproductive Technologies (2007), examined both the social context of reproductive technologies and the individual experience of infertility, including the tendency of reproductive technologies to function as a consumeristic rite of passage in coming to terms with infertility. More recent work has focused on egg freezing, repro-genetic technologies, and eugenics.

During a leave of absence from NC State in 2013-14, Dr. Harwood served as the Executive Director of Public Schools First North Carolina, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting public schools in our state. Her interest in public education led to further research in Wake County and the publication of her second book, Wake: Why the Battle over Diverse Public Schools Still Matters (2024).

Area(s) of Expertise

- Biomedical Ethics
- Reproductive Technologies
- Feminist Theory

Publications

• Blueberries, Constitutional Values, and Educational Equality: Religious Activists on the Purpose of Public Education , Canopy Forum: On the Interactions of Law & Religion (2025)
• Reconsidering the Significance of Biogenetic Ties , Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory (2025)
• Abortion, IVF, and the Moral Status of the Embryo: The Missing Middle , Canopy Forum: On the Interactions of Law & Religion (2024)
• Wake: Why the Battle over Diverse Public Schools Still Matters , Rutgers University Press (2024)
• A Good Man is Hard to Find: Egg Freezing and the "Mating Gap" , The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School (2023)
• Freedom and Unavoidable Judgments , International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics (2020)
• Which “New Eugenics”? Expanding Access to ART, Respecting Procreative Liberty, and Protecting the Moral Equality of All Persons in an Era of Neoliberal Choice , International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics (2020)
• Decentering Whiteness in Feminist Bioethics: Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) as an Illustrative Case , Reproductive Ethics II (2018)
• On the Common Good and Medical Conscience Claims , International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics Blog (2018)
• Egg Freezing and the Feminist Quest for Equality in the Workplace , Reproductive Ethics (2017)

Grants