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.

Leahey, Erin, Jina Lee, Russell. J. Funk. (2023). What Types of Novelty Are Most Disruptive? American Sociological Review, 88(3): 562-597. 

Lee, Jina, Minjae Seo, Erin Leahey. (2022). Who Deserves Protection? How Naming Potential Beneficiaries Influences COVID-19 Vaccine Intentions. Socius, 8, 23780231221082422.

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.