Research
My research examines how evaluation systems that appear objective reproduce gender hierarchies across scientific and cultural fields. I ask: whose contributions are recognized as valuable, and whose are discounted? Across these programs, I trace how gender bias operates through everyday evaluation practices and accumulates into durable inequalities.
My methods include computational text analysis, bibliometric analysis, and survey experiments.
Gender and Scientific Evaluation
Scientific recognition is rarely neutral. My work in this area investigates how gender shapes which knowledge claims are treated as authoritative, how novelty is attributed and rewarded, and how uncertainty is managed differently depending on who makes a claim.
Key questions
- How do gendered dynamics shape which scientific contributions get recognized, cited, and treated as authoritative?
- How is novelty attributed and rewarded differently across gender lines?
- How is uncertainty managed differently depending on who makes a scientific claim?
Related work
Lee, Jina. Claiming Novelty, Claiming Authority: Gender Gaps in Scientific Impact Across Disciplines. Gender & Society.Forthcoming
Lee, Jina. The Theory Penalty: Gender Bias in Recognition of Scientific Novelty. Under Review
Lee, Jina. Stratified Fact-Making: How Gender and Novelty Claims Stratify the Stabilization of Scientific Facts. Working Paper
Leahey, Erin, Jina Lee, and Russell Funk. 2023. What Types of Novelty are Most Disruptive?. American Sociological Review, 88(3): 562-597 DOI ↗
Gender, Culture, and Recognition
Recognition unfolds across cultural fields, markets, and public arenas. My work in this area examines how gender and social hierarchies shape who is recognized, remembered, funded, protected, or able to remain publicly present.
Key questions
- How do cultural institutions determine whose work is recognized and remembered?
- How do gender stereotypes shape access to recognition and resources?
- How do social categories influences judgments of who deserves support or protection?
- At which stages of evaluation do inequalities emerge and accumulate?
Related work
Lee, Jina. 2025. Gendered Pathways to Perpetual Fame: The Selection of Elite Novelists into the Korean Literary Canon. Poetics, 112 DOI ↗
Lee, Jina, Minjae Seo, and Erin Leahey. 2022. Who Deserves Protection? How Naming Potential Beneficiaries Influences the COVID-19 Vaccine Intentions. Socius, 8 DOI ↗
Zhao, Yi, Jina Lee, and Cheryl Ellenwood. 2021. The Persistent Influence of Gender Stereotypes in Social Entrepreneurial Financing. Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, 15(3): 811-832 DOI ↗
Ryu, Dahyun, Jina Lee. Survivorship in Public: Differential Durability and the Conflictual Face of Korean Digital Feminism. Working Paper
Science and Academia
Scientific knowledge is shaped not only by what researchers study but by how scientific communities are organized. This line of work examines how structural features of academic fields, such as how audiences are structured, publication norms, and data practices, influence the production, reception, and epistemic character of scientific knowledge.
Key questions
- How does audience structure shape the impact of domain-spanning innovation?
- How do editorial and data sharing requirements shape the epistemic character of scientific articles?
Related work
Paik, Eugene T., Jina Lee, Russell Funk, Erin Leahey. Divide and Conquer? How Partitioned Audiences Shape the Impact of Domain-Spanning Innovation. Working Paper
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
AI and Research Practice
A newer line of my work asks how AI tools are changing research practice itself, not just its speed or volume.
Key questions
- How can AI-assisted research systems make interpretive decisions visible and auditable?
- What survives, and what is lost, when human judgment is relocated into external infrastructure a researcher runs alone?
Related work
Lee, Jina, Zhuofan Li. Conceptual Divergence Analysis: Mapping a Researcher’s Conceptual Vocabulary Against the Literatures They Address. R&R