Jennifer Hamer is vice provost for faculty affairs-faculty development at Penn State. She was formerly Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the University of Kansas. Her general area of study is the sociological and interdisciplinary qualitative study of families, especially those within the United States. Within this broad field, her primary research interests are African American fathers, mothers, and families, especially those that are working class.

She has published in varying journals such as the Journal of Marriage and the Family and Journal of Black Studies. In addition, she is the author of What it Means to Be Daddy: Fatherhood for Black Men Living Away from Their Children (Columbia University Press, 2001). Her most recent book, Abandoned in the Heartland: Work, Family, and Living in East St. Louis (University of California Press, 2011), is an analysis of how working class African American men and women negotiate work, kin care, and family in a poor suburb.

She is former editor of Race and Society, the past official journal of the Association of Black Sociologists; founder and former editor of Black Women, Gender, and Family; and founding editor of Women, Gender, and Families of Color, a multidisciplinary journal published biannually by the University of Illinois Press.