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College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Department of Sociology

Jina Lee

Profile picture for Jina Lee

Contact Information

3106 Lincoln Hall
702 S Wright St
Urbana, IL 61801
Assistant Professor

Biography

Jina Lee is a sociologist whose research examines how social biases systematically shape knowledge production and evaluation processes across scientific, cultural, and entrepreneurial domains. She integrates computational text analysis, bibliometric data, and experimental methods to investigate the mechanisms through which seemingly neutral evaluation criteria reproduce existing inequalities. Her recent work demonstrates how status characteristics such as gender influence which ideas are recognized as novel and whose contributions are deemed credible under crisis. By uncovering these patterns across multiple fields (from scientific publishing to literary recognition to entrepreneurial funding), her scholarship develops a framework for understanding how evaluation processes serve as critical sites for the reproduction of social inequality. Her research is published in American Sociological Review, Socius, and Journal of Social Entrepreneurship.

Research Interests

Sociology of Science and Technology, Gender, 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

Leahey, E., Lee, J., & Funk, R. J. (2023). What Types of Novelty Are Most Disruptive? American Sociological Review, 88(3), 562-597. 
Lee, J., Seo, M., & Leahey, E. (2022). Who Deserves Protection? How Naming Potential Beneficiaries Influences COVID-19 Vaccine IntentionsSocius, 8, 23780231221082422.
Zhao, Y., Lee, J., & Ellenwood, C. (2021). The Persistent Influence of Gender Stereotypes in Social Entrepreneurial FinancingJournal of Social Entrepreneurship, 1-22.

College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Department of Sociology

3120 Lincoln Hall

702 S. Wright St.

Urbana, IL 61801

(217) 333-1950

Email: sociology@illinois.edu

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