Jessica Nina Lester, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Inquiry Methodology (Qualitative Research) in the School of Education at Indiana University, Bloomington. Dr. Lester has published over 80 peer-reviewed journal articles, as well as numerous books and book chapters focused on discourse and conversation analysis, disability studies, and more general concerns related to qualitative research. She is a co-author of the first edition of Digital Tools for Qualitative Research, published with SAGE. She has also co-edited a book focused on performance ethnographies (Peter Lang, 2013) and is currently co-authoring a book focused on applied conversation analysis with SAGE. More recently, Dr. Lester co-authored a research methods textbook with SAGE (An introduction to educational research: Connecting methods to practice) and served as the co-editor of The Palgrave handbook of child mental health: Discourse and conversation studies and The Palgrave handbook of adult mental health: Discourse and conversation studies. She is a founding member of the Microanalysis of Online Data international network, the Associate Director of the Conversation Analysis Research in Autism group at the University of Leicester, UK, and the former co-program chair and current chair of the Qualitative Research Special Interest Group (AERA). In 2014, Dr. Lester received AERA's Division D's Early Career Award in Measurement and Research Methodology (Qualitative Methodology) and has also won several teaching awards at Indiana University. She has most recently published in journals such as Qualitative Inquiry, Qualitative Research, and Discourse Studies.
