hero image
Jennifer Lundquist - University of Massachusetts Amherst. Amherst, MA, US

Jennifer Lundquist

Professor of Sociology / Senior Associate Dean of Research & Faculty Development | University of Massachusetts Amherst

Amherst, MA, UNITED STATES

Jennifer Lundquist examines the pathways through which racial, ethnic and gender inequalities are perpetuated in institutional settings.

Expertise (4)

Workplace Inequality

Online Dating Behaviors

Race and Ethnicity

Inequality

Biography

Jennifer Lundquist examines the pathways through which racial, ethnic and gender inequalities are perpetuated and sometimes undone in various institutional settings, such as the workplace, the dating/marriage market and in families.

Her major areas of scholarship include analyzing online dating behaviors to better understand how interracial interaction contributes to continued racial hierarchies; taking advantage of unique social continuities in the U.S. military that provide insight into what drives racial disparities in health, family formation behaviors and other outcomes in larger society; and tracing the development and impact on the American welfare system of the U.S. prison and military system “submerged states.” By exploring alternative institutional contexts, she casts a number of important social problems in a new light. Her data collection and methods span from analysis of “big data” scraped from the web, administrative records and surveys to qualitative interview approaches.

Video

Publications:

Documents:

Photos:

Videos:

Dr. Jennifer Lundquist on Addressing the Digital Harassment of Scholars The Dating Divide: How systemic racism manifests in online dating

Audio/Podcasts:

Education (3)

University of Pennsylvania: Joint Ph.D., Sociology & Demography

University of Pennsylvania: A.M., Demography

Washington and Lee University: B.A., Anthropology/Archaeology and Spanish

Select Recent Media Coverage (8)

Opinion: FTX whistleblower was unusual. Most witnesses are too afraid to speak up.

MarketWatch  online

2023-09-23

Research by Jennifer Lindquist is cited in an opinion piece about risks faced by corporate whistleblowers. Berman and Lundquist found that more whistleblowers are women and that women face higher rates of reprisal than male whistleblowers.

view more

Why aren't college-educated Black women meeting their match?

Insider  online

2023-02-05

"We have an economic system that creates real inequality, in particular for Black men. And so you have a situation known as the marriage squeeze, where Black women tend to be more highly educated than Black men because of the different ways in which a racist society impacts men versus women," said Jennifer Lundquist, professor of Sociology and Senior Associate Dean of Research & Faculty Development at the University of Massachusetts, and co-author of "The Dating Divide."

Media Appearance Image

view more

Beyond the Scenes from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah: How Sexual Racism Affects Online Dating

Comedy Central  online

2022-05-31

In a podcast, Jennifer Lundquist discusses digital sexual racism with “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” correspondent Ronny Chieng and comedian Roy Wood Jr.

beyond the scenes

view more

People are using Tinder to sell insurance policies and looking for love on LinkedIn, in an online world where the boundaries are increasingly blurred

Insider  online

2022-04-21

Jennifer Lundquist s quoted in a story about dating apps increasingly being used for purposes other than those intended, such as using LinkedIn to find a date or Tinder to sell insurance.

view more

When Women Blow the Whistle

Society of Women Engineers  online

2022-01-11

This idea that women are more focused on the public good than men is common and not without some data supporting it. The United Nations named the global empowerment of women a critical step in reducing corruption and working toward greater equality. Dr. Berman and Dr. Lundquist note several studies that found a greater share of women in elected office results in lower levels of government corruption. Other studies have found that when it comes to business transactions, women are more ethical than men. This may be due to how women are socialized, they note.

Media Appearance Image

view more

Why your swipes on Hinge and OKCupid might be racist

New York Post  print

2021-02-19

Jennifer Lundquist is interviewed for an article about “The Dating Divide,” the new book she co-authored, which examines racism in the world of online dating.

new york post graphic

view more

This 24-year-old Boston student went on as many as three dates a day for a month — all in the name of love

The Boston Globe  print

2018-09-08

Jennifer Lundquist comments in a story about a 24-year-old Boston man who has developed an approach to online dating that is based exclusively on efficiency and meeting as many women as possible each day. “I think people just have an internal abhorrence to approaching romance that way – it seems so assembly-line cold and clinical. And I think we should get over that. You shouldn’t be online dating if you’re not willing to be really analytical about it,” Lundquist says.

Jennifer Lundquist in Boston Globe

view more

What Is the 'Success Sequence' and Why Do So Many Conservatives Like It?

The Atlantic  print

2018-07-31

When Jennifer Lundquist. a sociologist at UMass Amherst, studied marriage in the U.S. military, she found that when the economic and social structures around people were stable and equal, differences in marriage rates largely disappeared. “Black civilians are less likely than white civilians to marry, whereas black and white military enlistees exhibit similar—and very high—propensities to marry,” she wrote.

Jennifer Lundquist quote

view more

Select Publications (3)

Why are so many big tech whistleblowers women? Here is what the research shows

The Conversation

Francine Berman and Jennifer Lundquist

2022-06-06

UMass Amherst faculty Francine Berman and Jennifer Lundquist examine the reasons that many whistleblowers in the technology industry tend to be women.

view more

The Dating Divide: Race and Desire in the Era of Online Romance (BOOK)

University of California Press

Celeste Vaughan Curington, Jennifer Hickes Lundquist and Ken-Hou Lin

2021-02-09

The Dating Divide is the first comprehensive look at "digital-sexual racism," a distinct form of racism that is mediated and amplified through the impersonal and anonymous context of online dating.

view more

Does a Criminal Past Predict Worker Performance? Evidence from One of America's Largest Employers

Social Forces

Jennifer Lundquist, Elko Strader and Devah Prager

2018-01-30

This paper is one of the first systematic assessments of ex-felons’ workplace performance. Using FOIA-requested data from the Department of Defense, we follow 1.3 million ex-offender and non-offender enlistees in the US military from 2002 to 2009. Those with a felony background show no difference in attrition rates due to poor performance compared to those without criminal records

view more