Jina Lee
Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
I study how evaluation systems reproduce gender inequality in science and in cultural fields.
About
When we say something or someone is valuable, who decides, how do they decide, and by what criteria? My research examines how evaluation practices that appear meritocratic systematically disadvantage women across scientific and cultural fields. I use computational text analysis, bibliometric analysis, and survey experiments to trace how these biases operate through everyday practices and accumulate into durable inequalities.
Research Areas
Gender and Scientific Evaluation
How do gendered dynamics shape which scientific contributions get recognized, cited, and treated as authoritative?
Read more →Gender and Cultural Evaluation
How do canonization processes in literature and culture embed and reproduce gender hierarchies?
Read more →Publications
Lee, Jina. 2025. Gendered Pathways to Perpetual Fame: The Selection of Elite Novelists into the Korean Literary Canon. Poetics, 112 DOI ↗
Leahey, Erin, Jina Lee, Russell J. Funk. 2023. What Types of Novelty Are Most Disruptive? American Sociological Review, 88(3): 562-597 DOI ↗
Lee, Jina, Minjae Seo, Erin Leahey. 2022. Who Deserves Protection? How Naming Potential Beneficiaries Influences COVID-19 Vaccine Intentions. Socius, 8 DOI ↗
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 DOI ↗
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 →