Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Anthropology,

#51

Mary Catherine Bateson

Mary Catherine Bateson

#7465

Overall Influence

1939 - 2021 (82 years)

Mary Catherine Bateson was an American writer and cultural anthropologist. The daughter of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, Bateson was a noted author in her field with many published monographs. Among her books was With a Daughter's Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, a recounting of her upbringing by two famous parents. She taught at Harvard, Amherst, and George Mason University, among others. Bateson was a fellow of the International Leadership Forum and was president of the Institute for Intercultural Studies in New York until 2010.

#52

Mai Yamani

#14469

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Mai Yamani is an independent Saudi scholar, author and anthropologist. Early life Yamani was born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1956 to an Iraqi mother from Mosul and a Saudi Arabian father from Mecca. Her paternal grandfathers came from Yemen, hence the surname Yamani . Her early education included schooling in Baghdad, Iraq and Mecca, Saudi Arabia. She attended secondary school at the renowned Château Mont-Choisi in Lausanne, Switzerland, from 1967 to 1975. She received her bachelor's degree summa cum laude from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania; and subsequently attended Somerville College, University of Oxford, where she was the first Yemeni woman to obtain a M.St.

#53

Janice M. Morse

#43229

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Janice Margaret Morse in Blackburn, Lancs., UK to New Zealand parents. She is an anthropologist and nurse researcher who is best known as the founder and chief proponent of the field of qualitative health research. She has taught in the United States and Canada. She received PhDs in transcultural nursing and in anthropology at the University of Utah, where she later held the Ida May “Dotty” Barnes and D Keith Barnes Presidential Endowed Chair in the College of Nursing at University of Utah,. She is also an Emerita Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah and Professor Emerita at the University of Alberta.

#54

Bambi Schieffelin

#25715

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Bambi B. Schieffelin is a linguistic anthropologist and professor emerita at New York University in the department of Anthropology. Along with Elinor Ochs, she pioneered the field of language socialization. In addition, she has written extensively about language contact, language ideology, literacy, Haitian Creole, and missionization.

#55

Naomi Quinn

#20131

Overall Influence

1939 - 2019 (80 years)

Naomi Robin Quinn was a major figure in cognitive anthropology, with contributions to research methods and cultural models, particularly applied to topics such as American models of marriage and relationships and to child-rearing cross-culturally.

#56

Regina Bendix

#39857

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Dr. Regina Bendix is a professor of European Ethnology at the University of Göttingen, Germany. History Bendix began her academic studies in Volkskunde, cultural anthropology and German studies in her native Switzerland. She immigrated to the United States in 1980 when she moved to Berkeley, California. Here she completed a B.A. in Folklore at the University of California, Berkeley. She pursued graduate studies at Indiana University where she completed a M.A. in 1984 in Folklore, with minors in cultural anthropology and German studies. Ultimately she was awarded her PhD in these disciplines in 1987.

#57

Helen Fisher

#6590

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Helen Elizabeth Fisher is an American anthropologist, human behavior researcher, and self-help author. She is a biological anthropologist, is a senior research fellow, at The Kinsey Institute, Indiana University, and a member of the Center For Human Evolutionary Studies in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University. Prior to Rutgers University, she was a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

#58

Alba Zaluar

#36935

Overall Influence

1942 - 2019 (77 years)

Alba Maria Zaluar was a Brazilian anthropologist, with emphases in urban anthropology and in anthropology of violence. In 1984, she obtained her PhD in social Anthropology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

#59

Maeve Kennedy McKean

#8411

Overall Influence

1979 - 2020 (41 years)

Maeve Fahey Kennedy McKean was an American public health official, human rights attorney, and academic. A member of the Kennedy family, she was a daughter of Maryland Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and a granddaughter of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

#60

Lyn Miles

#29458

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

H. Lyn Miles is an American bio-cultural anthropologist and animal rights advocate. Miles is known for a 1970s experiment in which a baby orangutan named Chantek was videotaped during sign language acquisition. She was teaching sign language providing a full human experience in the immersive-participant-observation way, the same way human babies are taught during infancy.

#61

Annelise Riles

#13211

Overall Influence

Annelise Riles is an interdisciplinary anthropologist and legal scholar. She is the executive director of the Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern University, contributing to Northwestern's interdisciplinary programs and research on globally relevant topics. Riles is also the associate provost for global affairs and a professor of law and anthropology.

#62

Rayna Rapp

#30511

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Rayna Rapp is a professor and associate chair of anthropology at New York University, specializing in gender and health; the politics of reproduction; science, technology, and genetics; and disability in the United States and Europe. She has contributed over 80 published works to the field of anthropology, independently, as a co-author, editor, and foreword-writing, including Robbie Davis-Floyd and Carolyn Sargent's Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge. Her 1999 book, Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: the Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America, received multiple awards upon release and h...

#63

Elizabeth Colson

#38337

Overall Influence

1917 - 2016 (99 years)

Elizabeth Florence Colson was an American social anthropologist and professor emerita of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. She was best known for the classic long-term study of the Tonga people of the Gwembe Valley in Zambia and Zimbabwe, which she began in 1956 with Thayer Scudder, 11 years after she obtained her doctorate and while Scudder was a second-year graduate student. Dr. Colson focused her research on the consequences of forced resettlement on culture and social organization, the effects of economic pressure on familial relationships, rituals, religious life, a...

#64

Yuki Konagaya

#46795

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

is a Japanese professor specializing in the history and cultural anthropology of Central Asia and Mongolia. Biography Konagaya completed a bachelor's degree in 1981 and a master's degree in 1983, both at Kyoto University. From 1987 to 2004 she held research positions, and a professorship, at the National Museum of Ethnology.

#65

Sarah Parcak

#25005

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (45 years)

Sarah Helen Parcak is an American archaeologist and Egyptologist, who has used satellite imagery to identify potential archaeological sites in Egypt, Rome and elsewhere in the former Roman Empire. She is a professor of Anthropology and director of the Laboratory for Global Observation at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In partnership with her husband, Greg Mumford, she directs survey and excavation projects in the Faiyum, Sinai, and Egypt's East Delta.

#66

Elizabeth Mertz

#32177

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Elizabeth Mertz is a linguistic and legal anthropologist who is also a law professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, where she teaches family law courses. She has been on the research faculty of the American Bar Foundation since 1989. She has a PhD in Anthropology from Duke University and a JD from Northwestern University . Her early research focused on language, identity and politics in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and her dissertation dealt with language shift in Cape Breton Scottish Gaelic, drawing on semiotic anthropology.

#67

Sydel Silverman

#27806

Overall Influence

1933 - 2019 (86 years)

Sydel Finfer Silverman Wolf was an American anthropologist notable for her work as a researcher, writer, and advocate for the archival preservation of anthropological research. Silverman's early research focused on the study of complex societies and the history of anthropology. This work involved conducting anthropological research in Central Italy, with a focus on traditional agrarian systems, land reform, and festivals in central Italy. She later became active as an administrator, advocating for the study of cultural anthropology and an important force within the community where she organiz...

#68

Beatrice Blyth Whiting

#15797

Overall Influence

1914 - 2003 (89 years)

Beatrice Blyth Whiting , was an American anthropologist specializing in the comparative study of child development. Together with her husband John Whiting, she was a key figure in the Harvard Department of Social Relations and a pioneer in the cross-cultural study of childhood and child development.

#69

Sabina Magliocco

Sabina Magliocco

#10948

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Sabina Magliocco , is a professor of anthropology and religion at the University of British Columbia and formerly at California State University, Northridge . She is an author of non-fiction books and journal articles about folklore, religion, religious festivals, foodways, witchcraft and Neo-Paganism in Europe and the United States.

#70

Xanthé Mallett

#24149

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Xanthé Danielle Mallett is a Scottish forensic anthropologist, criminologist and television presenter. She specialises in human craniofacial biometrics and hand identification, and behaviour patterns of paedophiles, particularly online. She is a senior lecturer at the University of Newcastle in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia.

#71

Anne Allison

#14099

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Anne Allison is a professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University in the United States, specializing in contemporary Japanese society. She wrote the book Nightwork on hostess clubs and Japanese corporate culture after having worked at a hostess club in Tokyo.

#72

Patty Jo Watson

#20347

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Patty Jo Watson is an American archaeologist noted for her work on Pre-Columbian Native Americans, especially in the Mammoth Cave region of Kentucky. Her early investigations focused on the origins of agriculture and pastoralism in the Near East.

#73

Susanne Schröter

Susanne Schröter

#20374

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Susanne Schröter is a contemporary Social Anthropologist focussing primarily on Islam, Gender and Conflict Studies. Biography Susanne Schröter is head of a research group on "Contemporary discourses on state and society in the Islamic world" and carries out a research project founded by the German Research Foundation entitled "Re-negotiating gender in contemporary Indonesia. Empowerment strategies of Muslim and secular women activists".

#74

Norma Mendoza-Denton

#39411

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Norma Catalina Mendoza-Denton is a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She specializes in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, including work in sociophonetics, language and identity, ethnography and visual anthropology.

#75

Dorinne K. Kondo

#20184

Overall Influence

Dorinne K. Kondo is a professor of American studies and Ethnicity and Anthropology at the University of Southern California. She is a scholar, playwright, and has over 20 years of work experience in dramaturge; her work shows the structural inequality of race and ethnicities in the world of contemporary theatre. Her creative performances are shedding light on racism and power in the theatre industry but her work mostly focuses on discrimination and racism towards Asians, which makes a link to art and politics. Kondo's writings discuss issues on power, gender inequality, the discourses in a Japanese workplace, and racism in the fashion industry.

#76

Eliane Karp

#12629

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Eliane Chantal Karp Fernenbug de Toledo is a Peruvian anthropologist, former First Lady of Peru, and the wife of the ex-president of Peru, Alejandro Toledo. She specializes in the study of Andean indigenous cultures.

#77

Carenza Lewis

#15287

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Carenza Rachel Lewis is a British academic archaeologist and television presenter. Early life Lewis received her formal education at the school of the Church of England Community of All Hallows, in Suffolk. She studied archaeology and anthropology at Girton College, Cambridge.

#78

Mamphela Ramphele

#6626

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Mamphela Aletta Ramphele is a South African politician, anti-apartheid activist, medical doctor and businesswoman. She was a partner of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, with whom she had two children. She is a former vice-chancellor at the University of Cape Town and a former managing director at the World Bank. Ramphele founded political party Agang South Africa in February 2013 but withdrew from politics in July 2014. Since 2018, she has been the co-president of the Club of Rome

#79

Karen Nakamura

#39834

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Karen Nakamura is an American academic, author, filmmaker, photographer and the Robert and Colleen Haas Distinguished Chair of Disability Studies and Professor of Anthropology at University of California, Berkeley. Previously she was Associate Professor of Anthropology and East Asian Studies and Chair of LGBT Studies at Yale University.

#80

Hilda Kuper

#29269

Overall Influence

1911 - 1992 (81 years)

Hilda Beemer Kuper was a social anthropologist most notable for her extensive work on Swazi culture. She started studying the Swazi culture and associating with the Swaziland's royal family after she was awarded with a grant by the International African Institute of London. She studied and illustrated Swazi traditions embodied in the political vision of King Sobhuza II, who later became a close friend. King Sobhuza II personally awarded Kuper with Swazi citizenship in 1970.

#81

Sarah Pink

#38299

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Sarah Pink is a British-born social scientist, ethnographer and social anthropologist, now based in Australia, known for her work using visual research methods such as photography, images, video and other media for ethnographic research in digital media and new technologies. She has an international reputation for her work in visual ethnography and her book Doing Visual Ethnography, first published in 2001 and now in its 4th edition, is used in anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, photographic studies and media studies. She has designed or undertaken ethnographic research in UK, Spain, ...

#82

Katherine Ann Dettwyler

#25609

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Katherine Ann Dettwyler is an American anthropologist and advocate of breastfeeding. She was an adjunct professor at the University of Delaware. In 2017, she gained media attention for her comments regarding Otto Warmbier, a 22-year-old college student who received fatal brain damage while imprisoned in North Korea.

#83

Susan Hirsch

#35842

Overall Influence

Susan F. Hirsch is a legal anthropologist whose work has specialized in the study of legal language. She is a professor of conflict resolution and anthropology at George Mason University, where she holds the Vernon M. and Minnie I. Lynch Chair in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution.

#84

Marjorie Shostak

#25797

Overall Influence

1945 - 1996 (51 years)

Marjorie Shostak was an American anthropologist. Though she never received a formal degree in anthropology, she conducted extensive fieldwork among the !Kung San people of the Kalahari desert in south-western Africa and was widely known for her descriptions of the lives of women in this hunter-gatherer society.

#85

Genevieve Bell

#22145

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Areas of Specialization: Culture and Technology Genevieve Bell is the Florence Violet McKenzie Chair and Distinguished Professor for the Australian National University College of Engineering and Computer Science, a Senior Fellow at Intel, Director of the Autonomy, Agency and Assurance Institute (3A Institute) at Australian National University, and the first SRI International Engelbert Distinguished Fellow. She earned a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Philosophy from Bryn Mawr College. She went on to earn an additional Master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Stanford University. She is very well known...

#86

Alison Sheridan

#39703

Overall Influence

Alison Sheridan is a British archaeologist and was Principal Curator of Early Prehistory at National Museums Scotland, where she worked from 1987 to 2019. She specialises in the Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age of Britain and Ireland, and particularly in ceramics and stone axeheads.

#87

Marianne Gullestad

#46866

Overall Influence

1946 - 2008 (62 years)

Marianne Gullestad was a Norwegian social anthropologist. Gullestad grew up in Bergen, took her magister degree in social anthropology from the University of Bergen in 1975 and her dr. philos. in 1984. Her thesis from 1984, Kitchen table society, treated the life of young working-class mothers. She was appointed guest lecturer at the University of Chicago during three periods in the 1980s and 1990s. From 1998 she was appointed assistant professor at the University of Tromsø. Gullestad frequently appeared in television and radio, and wrote hundreds of newspaper articles.

#88

Jean La Fontaine

Jean La Fontaine

#12483

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

Jean Sybil La Fontaine FRAI is a British anthropologist and emeritus professor of the London School of Economics. She has done research in Africa and the UK, on topics including ritual, gender, child abuse, witchcraft and satanism. In 1994 she wrote a government report: The Extent and Nature of Organised and Ritual Abuse.

#89

Joanna Overing

#29354

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Joanna Overing is an American anthropologist based in Scotland. She has conducted research on egalitarianism, indigenous cosmology, philosophical anthropology, aesthetics, the ludic and linguistics through fieldwork in Amazonia. She has extensively studied indigenous Piaroa people in the Orinoco basin of Venezuela.

#90

Hebe Vessuri

#40166

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Hebe Vessuri is an Argentine–Venezuelan social anthropologist. In 2017, she was recognized with the John Desmond Bernal Prize Award from the Society for Social Studies of Science. Early life and education Vessuri was born in 1942 in Buenos Aires. She married young and studied at the University of Oxford. While there, she wished to study anthropology but was unable to due to age restrictions. She received permission from the director of the Anthropology Faculty, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, to study under his supervision.

#91

Joan Halifax

#12541

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Joan Jiko Halifax is an American Zen Buddhist teacher, anthropologist, ecologist, civil rights activist, hospice caregiver, and the author of several books on Buddhism and spirituality. She currently serves as abbot and guiding teacher of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a Zen Peacemaker community which she founded in 1990. Halifax-roshi has received Dharma transmission from both Bernard Glassman and Thich Nhat Hanh, and previously studied with the Korean master Seung Sahn. In the 1970s she collaborated on LSD research projects with her ex-husband Stanislav Grof, in addition to other collaborative efforts with Joseph Campbell and Alan Lomax.

#92

Caroline Humphrey

#23678

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Caroline Humphrey, Baroness Rees of Ludlow, is a British anthropologist and academic. Biography Humphrey's father was the biologist Conrad H. Waddington. Her mother was her father's second wife, architect Margaret Justin Blanco White ; she has a younger sister, the mathematician Dusa McDuff, and an elder half-brother, the physicist C. Jake Waddington, by her father's first marriage to Cecil Elizabeth Lascelles.

#93

Bonnie Nardi

#2001

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Bonnie A. Nardi is an emeritus professor of the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, where she led the TechDec research lab in the areas of Human-Computer Interaction and computer-supported cooperative work. She is well known for her work on activity theory, interaction design, games, social media, and society and technology. She was elected to the ACM CHI academy in 2013. She retired in 2018.

#94

Meredith Small

#11050

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Meredith Francesca Small is a Professor Emerita of Anthropology at Cornell University and popular science author. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri. She has been widely published in academic journals, and her research is presented in her most popular book: Our Babies, Ourselves. She spent many years studying both people and primate behaviour. Her current area of interest is in the intersection of biology and culture, and how that has influenced parenting.

#95

Hazel Tucker

#57448

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Hazel Mary Tucker is an English-born New Zealand social anthropologist. She is Professor of Tourism at the University of Otago. Academic career Tucker graduated from Durham University, England with a PhD in social anthropology in 1999. She moved to New Zealand in January 2000 to lecture at the University of Otago and was promoted to full professor there, with effect from 1 February 2019.

#96

Ernestine Friedl

#43590

Overall Influence

1920 - 2015 (95 years)

Ernestine Friedl was an American anthropologist, author, and professor. She served as the president of both the American Ethnological Society and the American Anthropological Association . Friedl was also the first female Dean of Arts and Sciences and Trinity College at Duke University, and was a James B. Duke Professor Emerita. A building on Duke's campus, housing the departments of African and African American Studies, Cultural Anthropology, the Latino/Latina Studies program, and Literature was named in her honor in 2008. Her major interests included gender roles, rural life in modern Greece, and the St.

#97

Laura Miller

#36766

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Laura Miller is an American anthropologist and the Ei'ichi Shibusawa-Seigo Arai Endowed Professor of Japanese Studies and Professor of History at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. She held various academic positions and jobs in both the United States and Japan before accepting this named chair in 2010.

#98

Judith Shapiro

#17267

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Judith R. Shapiro is a former President of Barnard College, a liberal arts college for women at Columbia University; as President of Barnard, she was also an academic dean within the university. She was also a professor of anthropology at Barnard. Shapiro became Barnard's 6th president in 1994 after a teaching career at Bryn Mawr College where she was chair of the Department of Anthropology. After serving as Acting Dean of the Undergraduate College in 1985-6, she was Provost, the chief academic officer, from 1986 until 1994. Debora L. Spar was appointed to replace Shapiro, effective July 1...

#99

Helen Codere

#41926

Overall Influence

1917 - 2009 (92 years)

Helen Frances Codere was an American cultural anthropologist who received her BA from the University of Minnesota in 1939 and her PhD in anthropology from Columbia University where she studied with Ruth Benedict. She is best known for her work with the Kwakwaka'wakw people of coastal British Columbia, Canada, known formerly as the "Kwakiutl."

#100

Katherine Verdery

#35368

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Katherine Verdery is an American anthropologist, author, and emeritus professor, following her tenure as the Julien J. Studley Faculty Scholar and Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York's Graduate Center.

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