Jaemin Lee (in Korean: 이재민) is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He serves as Associate Director (Methods) at the Centre for Population Research and is affiliated with the Computational Social Science Laboratory at CUHK. Before joining CUHK, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Northeastern University’s Network Science Institute. He holds a PhD in sociology from Duke University and a BA and MA from Yonsei University.
Professor Lee is a computational sociologist who studies how social networks structure and emerge from political, economic, and organizational behavior. His research advances sociological understanding of status hierarchy, social influence, political polarization, and boundary-making. Methodologically, he combines digital trace data, network models, and computational text analysis to address theoretical questions that were long constrained by the limits of conventional methods and measurement. His work engages several substantive and methodological fields, including social networks, social capital, mathematical sociology, political sociology, and organizational sociology.
His current and past projects include:
• Political polarization using experiments, simulations, and text analysis
• Diffusion, homophily, and peer influence in student and consumer networks
• Machine‑learning approaches to status hierarchies among cultural producers
• Social capital and network advantages in microfinance groups
• Nationalism and its structural and cultural foundations
His work has appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Sociological Methods & Research, Sociological Science, Socius, Journal of International Development, among others. Professor Lee has received several awards from the American Sociological Association, including the James S. Coleman Award for Outstanding Article and the Geoffrey Tootell Mathematical Sociology Outstanding Dissertation-in-Progress Award. He has also received support from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council for projects on partisan common ground in social media (Early Career Scheme), nationalism in South Korea (General Research Fund), and moral foundations in pandemic politics (General Research Fund).
Professor Lee is an enthusiastic educator who strives to integrate quantitative research methods into students’ theoretical understanding in the age of data revolutions and artificial intelligence. He was honored with the Exemplary Teaching Award 2024 from the Faculty of Social Science at CUHK.
- Social Networks
- Computational Social Science
- Mathematical Sociology
- Political Sociology
Lee, Jaemin* and Yujie Li. 2026. “A Machine Learning Approach to Preferential Attachment and Status Advantage in a Hip-Hop Collaboration Network.” Sociological Methods & Research. Online First. https://doi.org/10.1177/00491241261420812
Lee, Jaemin* and Yujie Li. 2026. “Activity Constraints and the Emergence of Non-scale-free Networks: Evidence from Hip-hop and Academia.” PLoS One. 21(3): e0345862. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0345862
Lee, Jaemin, David Lazer, and Christoph Riedl. 2025. “Complex Contagion in Social Networks: Causal Evidence from a Country-Scale Field Experiment.” Sociological Science. 12: 685-714. https://doi.org/10.15195/v12.a28
Tan, Qiang and Jaemin Lee*. 2025. “A Neural Network and Embedding Association-Based Approach to Nationalism Dictionary Creation.” 2025 IEEE 7th International Conference on Natural Language Processing (ICNLP). pp. 282-286.
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICNLP65360.2025.11108444
Amstutz, Dominic and Jaemin Lee*. 2025. “Social Influence in the Public Expression of LGBTQ+ Support: The Case of Rainbow Flags in Residential Neighborhoods of a European City.” Socius. 11. https://doi.org/10.1177/23780231251353022
Lee, Jaemin* and Yujie Li. 2025. “Activity Constraints as a Mechanism for Non-Scale-Free Social Networks.” Pp. 305–15 in Complex Networks & Their Applications XIII, edited by H. Cherifi, M. Donduran, L. M. Rocha, C. Cherifi, and O. Varol. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-82431-9_25
Lee, Jaemin* and Mudit Kumar Singh. 2024. “Expansion , Cohesion and Diversity: The Network Advantages of Microfinance Groups in Indian Villages.” Journal of International Development. 36(1):559–586. https://doi.org/10.1002/jid.3828
Singh, Mudit Kumar and Jaemin Lee. 2020. “Social Inequality and Access to Social Capital in Microfinance Interventions.” International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy. 40(7): 575-588. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSSP-01-2020-0024
Trinh, Sarah L., Jaemin Lee, Carolyn T. Halpern, and James Moody. 2019. “Our Buddies, Ourselves: Exploring the Role of Sexual Homophily in Adolescent Friendship Networks.” Child Development. 90(1): e132-e147. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13052
Bail, Christopher, Lisa Argyle, Taylor Brown, John Bumpuss, Haohan Chen, M.B. Fallin Hunzaker, Jaemin Lee, Marcus Mann, Friedolin Merhout, and Alexander Volfovsky. 2018. “Exposure to Opposing Views on Social Media Can Increase Political Polarization.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 155(37): 9216-9221. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1804840115
| Year | Title of the Grant | Project Title |
| 2027-2029 | General Research Fund (PI), Research Grant Council | Who is ‘Us’ in Crisis? Moral Registers and Boundary Making in Pandemic Politics in Korea and the United States. |
| 2026-2028 | General Research Fund (Co-I), Research Grant Council | Investigating Care Networks for Chinese Older Adults with Dementia: Enhancing Care Capacity Beyond Dyadic Relationships |
| 2025-2027 | General Research Fund (PI), Research Grant Council | Nationalist Polarization? A Connectionist Approach to Mapping Cultural Schemas of Nationalism in South Korea. |
| 2022-2025 | Early Career Scheme (PI), Research Grant Council | Can Exposure to Bipartisan Views of the Opposing Party Reduce Partisan Animus among Social Media Users? |
| Area | Supervisee |
|
|
- SOCI 3229 Quantitative Data Analysis
- SOCI 3238 Digital Sociology
- SOCI 6010 Guided Studies I
- SOCI 6020 Guided Studies II
Department
- Associate Director & Leader of the Method Cluster, Executive Board of Centre for Population Research
- Library Resources and Information Technology Coordinator
- Member, Undergraduate Admissions Committee
- Member, Research Committee
- Member, Scholarships & Awards Committee
College
- College Coordinator, Chung Chi College
- Member, Exchange Programme Task Group, Chung Chi College
- Member, Scholarships for Balanced Education Selection Panel, Chung Chi College
- Editorial Board Member, Sociology of Power
last updated on 7 August 2026