Kita received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1993, working in the lab of David McNeill.
[3] From 1993-2003 Kita led the Gesture Project at Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, one of the research foci of the MPI.
[4] From 2017-2023, Kita has served as the editor of GESTURE (published by John Benjamins).
[5] Kita was president of the International Society for Gesture Studies from 2012–2014, and vice-president from 2010-2012.
[6] Kita's research has been funded by the National Science Foundation,[7] the Leverhulme Trust,[8] and other agencies.