Jina Lee is a sociologist who explores the processes and consequences of valuation: the social process through which importance, worth, or significance is assigned to ideas, practices, or contributions. She focuses on which novel discoveries are viewed as important in science, and how this affects scientific progress. She also examines how gender and race shape decisions of what is important, and how this reinforces existing inequality. Her work contributes to the sociology of science and knowledge, gender, medical sociology, and culture. She employs diverse methods such as computational text analysis and survey-based experiments. Her research is published in American Sociological Review, Socius, and Journal of Social Entrepreneurship.