Jennifer Alpert is a film scholar interested in portrayals of marginalized groups in the popular cinemas of the Americas as it pertains to race, gender identity, sexuality, class, and political ideology among others, and with a focus on human rights in Latin America. Her book project, Collective Reconstructions: Genre and Historical Trauma in Argentinean Cinema, rethinks the affective work popular cinema performed in the post-dictatorship era and argues that the popular screen was a space of rearticulation of the nation as a community after dictatorship. She has taught courses on the cinemas of Latin America, race and gender in Hollywood film, film genre (melodrama, crime film/noir, science fiction, musicals), animation, colonialism and visual representation, and migration in film.

In her life before Harvard, she worked in the Hollywood industry at places such as Pixar Animation Studios and in public-facing initiatives such as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Pacific Standard Time: Los Angeles/Latin America project, From Latin America to Hollywood: Latino Film Culture in Los Angeles 1967–2017, aiming to increase Latin American/Latinx representation in popular media. She currently serves as the advisor for anotherPacific Standard Time: Los Angeles/Latin America project at the UCLA Film and TV Archive, Science Fiction Against the Margins. She is also the managing editor of the JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies Teaching Media Dossier, a publication dedicated to media pedagogies in higher education, where she champions equity and inclusive classroom practices. In conjunction with these roles, she is a Mellon Mays mentor and a PUENTE community college mentor, both nationwide programs aimed at supporting success of underserved minorities in higher education.

She is a proud Latin American immigrant and is constantly trying to reduce her carbon footprint. When she is not researching, teaching, or mentoring students, you can find her glued to her television.