Jina Lee, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Sociology

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

I study how evaluations of originality, authority, and credibility are formed, whose work those judgments elevate, and why inequality is greatest where standards are least clear.

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Jina Lee, Assistant Professor of Sociology

About

Jina Lee is a sociologist of evaluation, knowledge, and inequality. Her work asks: how do systems of evaluation determine whose contributions are recognized as original, authoritative, and credible? And how does inequality concentrate in the judgments least governed by clear standards? She pursues these questions across three arenas: the sciences; cultural canonization; and the AI systems now absorbing parts of scholarly judgment itself, using computational text analysis, bibliometric analysis, and experiments. Her research appears in the American Sociological Review, Gender & Society (forthcoming), and Poetics, among other venues.

Publications

Journal Articles

Book Chapters

  • Lassiter, Charles, Sarah Bratt, Erin Leahey, Charlie Gomez, Jina Lee, and Yeaeun Kwon. Humble Reflections on the Intellectual Process of Developing a Text-based Measure of Humility in Inquiry. In Humble Inquiry: New Perspectives on Intellectual Humility, edited by Nathan Ballantyne, Jared Celniker, and Norbert Schwartz. Cambridge University PressForthcoming

Work in Progress

  • Lee, Jina, Zhuofan Li. Conceptual Divergence Analysis: Mapping a Researcher’s Conceptual Vocabulary Against the Literatures They Address. R&R

  • Lee, Jina. The Theory Penalty: Gender Bias in Recognition of Scientific Novelty. R&R

  • Ryu, Dahyun, Jina Lee. Survivorship in Public: Differential Durability and the Conflictual Face of Korean Digital Feminism. Working Paper

  • Lee, Jina. Stratified Fact-Making: How Gender and Novelty Claims Stratify the Stabilization of Scientific Facts. Working Paper

  • Paik, Eugene T., Jina Lee, Russell Funk, Erin Leahey. Divide and Conquer? How Partitioned Audiences Shape the Impact of Domain-Spanning Innovation. Working Paper

Teaching

I teach undergraduate courses in sociology of culture, sociology of gender, social statistics, and technology and society. My courses emphasize critical thinking and the application of sociological frameworks to contemporary empirical questions.

Teaching →