Jina Lee 

Jina Lee is an incoming Assistant Professor in Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign beginning Fall 2024. Her research program 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.

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 Intentions. Socius, 8, 23780231221082422.

Zhao, Y., Lee, J., & Ellenwood, C. (2021). The Persistent Influence of Gender Stereotypes in Social Entrepreneurial Financing. Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, 1-22.