About

Jenny L. Davis is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and an Associate Professor of Anthropology and American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she also serves as the director of the American Indian Studies Program. Her research interests sit at the intersections of Indigenous language futurism, including language reclamation and revitalization; Queer Indigenous Studies; speculative fiction and poetry; NAGPRA and repatriation; and Indigenous, anti-colonial, and community-based methods. Her scholarly work has been published in numerous academic journals, and she has authored poetry collections such as 'Trickster Academy' and 'Extant.' Her creative work has been featured in various literary journals and her visual art has been exhibited at multiple institutions. Davis has received several awards, including the Beatrice Medicine Award and the Ruth Benedict Book Prize, and was named the Dynamic Woman of the Year by the Chickasaw Nation in 2021. In her administrative roles, she has developed initiatives like the Native American and Indigenous Language Lab and the Center for Indigenous Science, and works toward the repatriation and care of Indigenous collections. She has also served as the Chancellor's Fellow of Indigenous Research & Ethics and has been actively involved in campus efforts to return Native American remains and objects to tribal communities.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Law
• Ecology
• Engineering ethics
• Public relations
• Art
• Environmental ethics
• Biology
• Aesthetics
• Engineering

Selected publications

• Embodiment

  The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Health, Illness, Behavior, and Society · 2025-10-31

  other1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract One does not have a body; one is a body. Embodiment refers to the cultural, social, physical, psychic, and experiential nature of being a body. Theorists take several different approaches in defining embodiment, sometimes integrating the physical, mental, and cultural, and at other times falsely dichotomizing embodiment's complex interrelated components. The body is a site of pleasure, pain, difference, and politics simultaneously. The body is agentic and lived, yet inscribed upon. Social actors both negotiate embodiment and take embodiment – their own and others' – for granted. Embodiment is affected by the technologies of the time, from language to medicine, to present‐day integrations with mechanical and digital objects.

  PublisherDOI

• How Do Human and AI Gender Bias Interact in Hiring Decisions?

  2025-06-06

  article

  The hiring process is crucial for organizational success but has long been troubled by human biases. Many organizations now include AI in their hiring protocols to mitigate these biases and increase efficiency. However, AI itself can have biases baked-in. Human biases and AI biases are distinct but related; here, we examine how human and AI biases interact to affect hiring outcomes. Through an online experiment, we examine this question in the context of gendered hiring for a male-dominated leadership position in electrical engineering. The study tests how elevated and depressed AI recommendations for male and female job candidates affect participant evaluations of those candidates, moderated by participants' attitudes about gender. Findings show that all else constant, elevated AI recommendations increased participants' evaluations of candidates for both competence and likeability, while depressed AI recommendations decreased participants' ratings on both dimensions. However, the benefits of AI recommendations did not distribute evenly. High AI scores benefited male candidates more than female candidates. Ratings were also affected by participants' gender attitudes, revealing effects of sexism on hiring decisions, even when AI is involved. These preliminary findings offer insight into the intersection of human and AI biases as they influence hiring outcomes.

  PublisherDOI

• Attending to settler colonialism in Black/Native American histories in <i>I've been Here All the While</i>

  Settler Colonial Studies · 2024-01-21

  article1st authorCorresponding

  In I've Been Here All the While, Roberts provides a definition of settler colonialism as 'a process that could be wielded by whoever sought to claim land; it involved not only a change in land occupation but also a transformation in thinking about and rhetorical justification of what it meant to reside in a place formerly occupied by someone else' (2). Central to this definition, then, is that instead of colonialism beginning with an invasion, the settlers in Roberts' book enter into the literal geographies and colonial process involuntarily, as displaced Native Americans and enslaved Africans/Afro-Indigenous people. Within this rendering, she argues that 'anyone can act as a "settler", despite previous status as, say, a slave or a dispossessed Indian, as long as they used this process–composed of rhetoric, American governmental structures, and individual action–which may have aided in their efforts to acquire land or protection by which ultimately served the goals of spatial occupation and white supremacy'. The second part of this definition pulls 'settler' away from a permanent quality one might be born into (say as a European-American in the US context) into an act one partakes in, thereby dislodging arguments that exclude those harmed by Black enslavement and Indigenous land theft.

  PublisherDOI

• Reciprocity and Redistribution

  2024-05-31 · 3 citations

  book-chapter

  This chapter offers a history of how Humanities Without Walls (HWW), a consortium project funded by the Mellon Foundation, has taken up the promises and challenges of the public humanities. HWW is a seedbed for modeling ethical practices of genuinely reciprocal and redistributive relationships as the foundation of a world of inquiry “without walls.” Here the development of reciprocal and redistributive (R&R) methodologies in one aspect of the HWW grant work: the Grand Research Challenge awards, is charted. The story is told of what interdisciplinary collaborative grantmaking has become over the life of the grant since 2015, as a result of both recent convulsive social and political changes and of the long-standing underlying conditions of economic inequality and racial injustice that are an ongoing feature of contemporary life. The process has shifted to centering colleagues in and outside the research/R1 university who already do this work, making their methods available to prospective grantees as part of how the R&R concept is socialized. The chapter details the ways HWW has encouraged collaborators to make co-designing a priority from the start of their work. In the process, the stakes of the “publics” in the public humanities at this historical juncture are discussed.

  PublisherDOI

• Biological samples taken from Native American Ancestors are human remains under <scp>NAGPRA</scp>

  American Journal of Biological Anthropology · 2023-04-13 · 6 citations

  reviewOpen access

  In the United States, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) provides a specific framework for the disposition of Native American Ancestral remains within its purview. However, samples such as a bone fragment, tooth, or other biological tissue taken from the remains of these Ancestors have been treated by institutions and researchers as independent of the individual from whom they were removed and used in destructive research such as paleogenomic and other archaeometric analyses without consultation, consent, and collaboration from Native American communities; are not cared for in keeping with the current best practices for Indigenous Ancestors; and are not likely to be repatriated to their communities. Here, we demonstrate that any biological samples removed from Ancestors who are covered under NAGPRA must also be handled according to the stipulations defined for "human remains" within the legislation. As such, we are not proposing a change to existing legislation, but rather best practices, specific to the context of the United States and NAGPRA, relating to the use of and care for biological samples taken from Native American Ancestors.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Community partnerships are fundamental to ethical ancient DNA research

  Human Genetics and Genomics Advances · 2023 · 50 citations

  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Engineering ethics

  the research, rather than a distraction from the scientific endeavor. If a research team does not have the capacity to meaningfully engage communities, questions must be asked about the value and benefit of their research.

  PublisherDOI

• Language And Racism

  2023-03-21 · 15 citations

  otherSenior author
  PublisherDOI
• RETRACTED

  Retracted: Extracting the practices of paleogenomics: A study of ancient DNA labs and research in relation to Native Americans and Indigenous peoples

  American Journal of Biological Anthropology · 2023-02-17 · 1 citations

  article

  Retraction: Cortez, A. D., Lippert, D., Davis, J. L., Nicholas, G., Malhi, R. S., Weyrich, L. S., Claw, K. G., Bader, A. C., &amp; Colwell, C. (2023). Extracting the practices of paleogenomics: A study of ancient DNA labs and research in relation to Native Americans and Indigenous peoples. American Journal of Biological Anthropology. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.24714 . The above article, published online on 17 February 2023 in Wiley Online Library ( wileyonlinelibrary.com ), has been retracted by agreement between the authors, the journal Editor in Chief, Trudy Turner, and Wiley Periodicals LLC. The retraction has been agreed due to a former collaborator voiding permission for use of their early contribution to the team project.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Gender Dynamics in Human-AI Role-Taking

  Advances in group processes · 2022-10-10 · 6 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Purpose Role-taking is a basic social process underpinning much of the structural social psychology paradigm – a paradigm built on empirical studies of human interaction. Yet today, our social worlds are occupied by bots, voice assistants, decision aids, and other machinic entities collectively referred to as artificial intelligence (AI). The integration of AI into daily life presents both challenges and opportunities for social psychologists. Through a vignette study, the authors investigate role-taking and gender in human-AI relations. Methodology Participants read a first-person narrative attributed to either a human or AI, with varied gender presentation based on a feminine or masculine first name. Participants then infer the narrator's thoughts and feelings and report on their own emotions, producing indicators of cognitive and affective role-taking. The authors supplement results with qualitative analysis from two open-ended survey questions. Findings Participants score higher on role-taking measures when the narrator is human versus AI. However, gender dynamics differ between human and AI conditions. When the text is attributed to a human, masculinized narrators elicit stronger role-taking responses than their feminized counterparts, and women participants score higher on role-taking measures than men. This aligns with prior research on gender, status, and role-taking variation. When the text is attributed to an AI, results deviate from established findings and in some cases, reverse. Research Implications This first study of human-AI role-taking tests the scope of key theoretical tenets and sets a foundation for addressing group processes in a newly emergent form.

  PublisherDOI

• Toward a Language of Possibility in Curation and Consultation Practices

  Collections A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals · 2022-03-01 · 12 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Language, especially categorization and description through language, is a frequent barrier to collaboration when it comes to collections taken from Native American and Indigenous communities. This impacts collections care within institutions and for the Native people whose relatives and objects are held in those institutions. Drawing on our experiences as NAGPRA and repatriation practitioners, we offer examples of adopting a “language of possibility.” Current legal and non-Indigenous institutional nomenclature often assumes that the categories used to describe Indigenous collections are “common sense,” and adjustments to that language are often only made after direct intervention from Native American and Indigenous communities. These terms and norms of discourse originate in white, EuroAmerican ideologies of science and scientific classification, and those ideologies are inseparable from their concomitant religious and linguistic systems. Shifting to language that recognizes animacy, or allows for the possibility of it, has the potential to undo this harm before, during, and after consultation and collaboration with Native Nations and Indigenous stakeholders. Language is a site of intervention into non-Indigenous assumptions and practices that not only create barriers to consultation and repatriation, but also directly impact collections care.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Ripan S. Malhi

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  8 shared

• Alyssa C. Bader

  McGill University

  6 shared

• George Nicholas

  Simon Fraser University

  4 shared

• Dorothy Lippert

  Smithsonian Institution

  4 shared

• Elizabeth A. Nelson

  Institut Pasteur

  4 shared

• Sean Ulm

  James Cook University

  4 shared

• Laura S. Weyrich

  Pennsylvania State University

  4 shared

• Chip Colwell

  4 shared

Education

• PhD, Linguistics

  University of Colorado Boulder

  2013

Awards & honors

• Beatrice Medicine Award from the Association for the Study o…
• Ruth Benedict Book Prize from the Association for Queer Anth…
• Dynamic Woman of the Year Award from the Chickasaw Nation (2…
• Conrad Humanities Scholar, College of Liberal Arts & Science…
• Helen Corley Petit Scholar, University of Illinois, Urbana-C…