Jennifer Earl is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Arizona. She taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) before joining Arizona. She is Director Emerita of the Center for Information Technology and Society and Director Emerita of the Technology and Society PhD Emphasis, both at UCSB.

Her research focuses on social movements and the sociology of law, with research emphases on the Internet and social movements, social movement repression, and legal change. She is the recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER Award for research from 2006-2011 on Web activismand is the PI for the lead institution on a newNSF grant focused on social movement organizations. She is also a member of theMacArthur Research Network on Youth and Participatory Politics. She has published widely, including an MIT Press book entitled Digitally Enabled Social Change, and in major sociological journals such as the American Sociological Review and the Annual Review of Sociology, as well as in respected specialty journals such as Sociological Theory and Mobilization, among others.