Contact Information
702 S Wright St
Urbana, IL 61801
Biography
Jina Lee is a sociologist who studies how seemingly objective evaluation systems reproduce social hierarchies. Using computational text analysis, bibliometric analysis, and experimental methods, her research asks: whose contributions are recognized as valuable, and whose are discounted? In science, she examines how knowledge claims and their reception are gendered. In cultural markets, she investigates how canonization processes embed gender biases. Expanding to global knowledge systems, she examines how national and linguistic hierarchies shape whose scholarship circulates internationally. Across these contexts, her work reveals a consistent pattern: evaluation practices that appear meritocratic embed biases that disadvantage women and lower-status actors. Her research has been published in the American Sociological Review, Poetics, Socius, and Journal of Social Entrepreneurship.
Research Interests
Sociology of Science and Technology, Gender and Inequality, Sociology of Culture, Computational Social Science
Education
2024 Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Arizona
2016 M.A. in Sociology at Yonsei University
2013 B.A. in Sociology and Political Science at Yonsei University
Additional Campus Affiliations
Assistant Professor, Sociology
Recent Publications
Lee, Jina. (2025). Gendered Pathways to Perpetual Fame: The Selection of Elite Novelists into the Korean Literary Canon. Poetics, 112.
Leahey, Erin, Jina Lee, Russell. J. Funk. (2023). What Types of Novelty Are Most Disruptive? American Sociological Review, 88(3): 562-597.
Lee, Jina, Minjae Seo, Erin Leahey. (2022). Who Deserves Protection? How Naming Potential Beneficiaries Influences COVID-19 Vaccine Intentions. Socius, 8.
Zhao, Yi, Jina Lee, Cheryl Ellenwood. (2021). The Persistent Influence of Gender Stereotypes in Social Entrepreneurial Financing. Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, 15(3): 811-832.