The Most Influential People Across History

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.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

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List of the most influential female people in Anthropology,

#801

Ann Jannetta

#108260
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (93 years)
Ann Bowman Jannetta is an American academic, historian, author, Japanologist and Professor of History Emerita at the University of Pittsburgh. Selected works In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Ann Jannetta, OCLC/WorldCat encompasses roughly 4 works in 10+ publications in 1 language and 500+ library holdings Epidemics and mortality in Tokugawa Japan: 1600-1868 Public health and the diffusion of vaccination in Japan The vaccinators: smallpox, medical knowledge, and the "opening" of Japan
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#802

Adria LaViolette

#184338
Overall Influence
Adria Jean LaViolette is an American archaeologist at the University of Virginia. She is a specialist in Swahili archaeology and is the joint editor of The Swahili World . Early life and education Adria LaViolette is one of the four children of Paul A. LaViolette, Jr., and Jean Scully LaViolette.
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#803

Lucinda Backwell

#132719
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Lucinda Backwell is an archaeologist and a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. She obtained her MSc in palaeoanthropology from the University of the Witwatersrand Medical School in 2000. Her PhD in palaeoanthropology was awarded in 2004, making her the first South African woman to be awarded a PhD in palaeoanthropology at a local institution. In 2011, she was promoted to senior researcher at the Evolutionary Studies Institute of the University of the Witwatersrand, where she taught introductory courses on human evolution and taphonomy, and supervised postgraduates on various topics, including fossil assemblages from caves in the Cradle of Humankind.
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#804

Sara Perry

#185042
Overall Influence
Sara Perry is an archaeologist. Her research focuses on public archaeology and the use of digital media in archaeology and heritage. She is the Director of Research and Engagement at Museum of London Archaeology.
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#805

Birgitta Hoffmann

#80477
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (56 years)
Birgitta Hoffmann is an archaeologist and adult education teacher. Her research covers the Roman military, especially the Roman frontiers and ancient glass and beads of the first millennium AD. Education and career Hoffmann studied at the University of Durham under Brian Dobson before studying at the University of Freiburg for her PhD.
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#806

Carol Breckenridge

#83189
Overall Influence
1942 - 2009 (67 years)
Carol A. Breckenridge was an American anthropologist and associate professor of history at the New School for Social Research, author of many books and articles on colonialism and the political economy of ritual; state, polity, and religion in South India; society and aesthetics in India since 1850; culture theory; and cosmopolitan cultural forms. In 1988 Breckenridge and fellow founding editor Arjun Appadurai started Public Culture, a field-defining academic journal in the areas of globalization and transnational cultural studies.
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#807

Maureen Carroll

#152444
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Maureen Carroll is a Canadian archaeologist and academic. She is the Chair in Roman Archaeology at the University of York. Career Carroll received a BA in Classical Studies from Brock University and a MA in Classical Archaeology from Indiana University. Carroll received a PhD in Classical Archaeology from Indiana University and Freie Universität. Carroll was subsequently based at Cologne University and the Romisch-Germanisches Museum. In 1998 Carroll was appointed as a lecturer in Roman Archaeology at the University of Sheffield. In 2020, she was appointed Chair of Roman archaeology at the U...
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#808

Mitzi Waltz

#58800
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Mitzi Waltz is a scholar of media and disability studies. As of 2020, she is a research associate at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Waltz was formerly an associate lecturer in autism studies at the Autism Centre of Sheffield Hallam University in the United Kingdom. Before her appointment in 2012, she was a lecturer in autism studies at the Autism Centre for Education and Research , University of Birmingham and a senior lecturer at the University of Sunderland.
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#809

Carole Hill

#73297
Overall Influence
Carole E. Hill is an American anthropologist and educator. She is a professor emerita at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia. She chaired the anthropology department at Georgia State University in Atlanta.
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#810

Andrea Berlin

#109350
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Andrea M. Berlin is an archaeologist and the James R. Wiseman Chair in Classical Archaeology in the Department of Archaeology at Boston University. She also holds a faculty position in the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies at Boston University. Before that she held positions at academic institutions, among which were the Morse-Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of Archaeology in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Minnesota. She received her PhD in 1988 from the University of Michigan.
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#811

Mónica Aguilar Bonilla

#68868
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (45 years)
Mónica Aguilar Bonilla is a Costa-Rican archaeologist. She is a Professor of Archaeology and Anthropology in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Costa Rica. Her current works are mainly about Costa Rican heritage. She has worked on documenting archaeological artifacts, artifacts repatriation, and application for World Heritage Status.
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#812

Camara Phyllis Jones

Camara Phyllis Jones
#44562
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Camara Phyllis Jones is an American physician, epidemiologist, and anti-racism activist who specializes in the effects of racism and social inequalities on health. She is known for her work in defining institutional racism, personally mediated racism, and internalized racism in the context of modern U.S. race relations. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Jones drew attention to why racism and not race is a risk factor and called for actions to address structural racism.
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#813

Elizabeth Fentress

#85900
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Elizabeth Barringer Fentress is a Roman archaeologist who specialises in Italy and North Africa. She has collaborated on the excavation of numerous sites in the Western Mediterranean and published their results. She is also the originator and scientific director of the online database of excavations in Italy, Bulgaria and elsewhere Fasti Online , and editor of its journal Fasti Online Documents & Research . In 2021 she was awarded the Archaeological Institute of America's 2022 gold medal for distinguished archaeological achievement.
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#814

Lynne Lancaster

#173819
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
Lynne C. Lancaster is an American Roman archaeologist specializing in Roman architecture and the topography of Rome. Biography Lancaster grew up in LaGrange, Georgia and graduated from LaGrange High school. She undertook her BArch at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and her MPhil and DPhil at the University of Oxford. Lancaster was Professor in the Department of Classics and World Religions at Ohio University where she taught from 1997 to 2020 and was chair of the department 2017–18. From 2018 to 2021 Lancaster served as the Andrew W. Mellon Humanities at the American Academy in Rome.
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#815

Shannon Jackson

#120717
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (58 years)
Shannon Jackson is the Cyrus and Michelle Hadidi Professor of Rhetoric and of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, Department Chair of History of Art, and former Associate Vice Chancellor of the Arts and Design. She also serves as Program Director of the Kramlich Collection and Kramlich Art Foundation.
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#816

Helene Whittaker

#187316
Overall Influence
Helène Whittaker is a Canadian-Norwegian archaeologist and scholar of antiquity. She is known for her work on the Bronze Age Aegean, ancient Greek and Roman language and culture, and Early Christianity. , she is professor of Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.
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#817

Elizabeth Slater

#89950
Overall Influence
1946 - 2014 (68 years)
Elizabeth Slater was a British archaeologist specialising in archaeometallurgy. She was the first female professor of archaeology appointed by the University of Liverpool, where she held the Garstang Chair in Archaeology from 1991 to 2007.
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#818

Susan Greaney

#123628
Overall Influence
Susan Greaney is a British archaeologist specialising in the study of British prehistory. She is a senior properties historian with English Heritage. She was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London on 27 June 2019.
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#819

Birgit Arrhenius

Birgit Arrhenius
#123107
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (93 years)
Birgit Arrhenius is a Swedish archaeologist and professor emeritus at Stockholm University. She was a professor of laboratory archaeology, and the first head of the university's Archaeological Research Laboratory. Her work has studied places including Helgö and Mälaren, and she has researched prehistoric pressblech and garnet cloisonné work. Arrhenius is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and was in 1992 the recipient of the Royal Patriotic Society's Gösta Berg Medal.
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#820

Margarita Gleba

#178403
Overall Influence
Margarita Gleba is an archaeologist and expert on early textiles and other organic materials. Gleba holds a BS in biology and art history from Rutgers University, followed by a MA and PhD in archaeology from Bryn Mawr College, the latter supervised by Jean MacIntosh Turfa. Her research uses scientific methods in archaeology and focuses on the pre- and protohistory of the peoples and cultures of the Mediterranean region, in addition to the archaeology of organic materials.
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#821

Mirjana Roksandic

#189008
Overall Influence
Mirjana Roksandic is a Serbian and Canadian paleoanthropologist. She is a professor at the University of Winnipeg. Education She has a Ph.D. from Simon Fraser University. Publications Position of skeletal remains as a key to understanding mortuary behaviorGreater sciatic notch as a sex indicator in juvenilesThe cultural dynamics of shell-matrix sitesPaleoanthropology of the Balkans and Anatolia : Human Evolution and its Context
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#822

Christine E. Morris

#61294
Overall Influence
Christine E. Morris is an Irish classical scholar, who is the Andrew A. David Professor in Greek Archaeology and History at Trinity College Dublin. An expert on religion in the Aegean Bronze Age, her work uses archaeological evidence to examine the practice and experience of belief. She is a member of the Standing Committee for Archaeology for the Royal Irish Academy.
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#823

Roxanne Varzi

#173817
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (54 years)
Roxanne Varzi is an Iranian-born American cultural anthropologist, filmmaker, sound artist, writer, playwright, and educator. She is a full professor of anthropology and film and media studies at University of California, Irvine . Varzi is known for her various works in media, including books, film documentaries, sound performances, and theatrical plays.
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#824

Anna Marie Prentiss

#184170
Overall Influence
Anna Marie Prentiss is an American archaeologist and Regents Professor of Anthropology at the University of Montana. She is known for her works on the history of the Great Plains, Pacific Northwest, and Arctic regions of North America.
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#825

Lotte Hedeager

#79304
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Lotte Hedeager is a Danish archaeologist who is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Oslo. Biography Lotte Hedeager was born in Copenhagen on 24 February 1948. She gained her MA in prehistoric archaeology at the University of Copenhagen in 1978, and her PhD at the University of Århus in 1990. In 1996, Hedeager was appointed Professor of Archaeology at the University of Oslo. She specializes in the study of Iron Age Scandinavia. She is a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
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#826

Olga Palagia

#88271
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
Olga Palagia is Professor of Classical Archaeology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and is a leading expert on ancient Greek sculpture. She is known in particular for her work on sculpture in ancient Athens and has edited a number of key handbooks on Greek sculpture.
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#827

Donna Carol Kurtz

#146591
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (82 years)
Donna Kurtz is an American classicist specializing in Greek art. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, she took her BA at the University of Cincinnati and her MA as a Woodrow Wilson Scholar at Yale. She read for a DPhil at Somerville College of the University of Oxford with a Marshall Scholarship, which she received in 1968 with her thesis The iconography of the Athenian white-ground lekythos under the supervision of Martin Robertson. This formed the partial basis for her first individual monograph, Athenian white lekythoi: patterns and painters, a standard reference work for the white-ground lekythos.
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#828

Lucinda Ramberg

#185729
Overall Influence
Lucinda Ramberg is an American anthropologist whose work focuses on gender, sexuality, religion and health. She was awarded multiple prizes in 2015 for her first book, Given to the Goddess: South Indian Devadasis and the Sexuality of Religion. Ramberg is associate professor in anthropology and director of graduate studies in the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at Cornell University.
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#829

Amanda Claridge

#115047
Overall Influence
1949 - 2022 (73 years)
Amanda Jacqueline Claridge FSA was a British professor of Roman archaeology at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research interests included "Roman archaeology, especially art, marble sculpture and the marble trade; Roman architecture and urbanism; topography and monuments of the city of Rome and Latium; Antiquarian studies in 16th and 17th century Rome."
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#830

Eugenia Georges

#113457
Overall Influence
Eugenia Georges is an American anthropologist and Professor of Anthropology at Rice University. She is known for her works on the cultural study of reproduction, medical anthropology, economic development, and labor migration.
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#831

Inger Zachrisson

#146116
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (89 years)
Inger Zachrisson is a Swedish archaeologist specializing in the history of the Sami people. As Associate Professor of Archaeology at Uppsala University and former curator of Stockholm's History Museum, she has researched Sami archaeology and history since the Iron Age.
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#832

Frances Lynch

#120844
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (87 years)
Frances Lynch is a Welsh archaeologist. She is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of History, Welsh History and Archaeology at Bangor University and the author of several volumes on the archaeology and prehistory of Wales.
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#833

Martine Segalen

#57082
Overall Influence
1940 - 2021 (81 years)
Martine Segalen was a French ethnologist. A specialist on family matters and European culture, she was a professor for multiple universities. Biography Segalen began working as a professor in the sociology department at Paris Nanterre University in 1996. She would go on to direct the sociology department and the program. She had graduated from Sciences Po in 1960, in addition to her doctorate in ethnology in 1984. From 1971 to 1996, she was a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research and was Director of the Centre d'ethnologie française from 1986 to 1996. In 2015, she ...
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#834

Phebe Fjellström

#81114
Overall Influence
1924 - 2007 (83 years)
Phebe Maria Fjellström née Lindgren was a Swedish ethnologist. She is remembered for her pioneering research into the culture of the Sámi peoples of northern Sweden, including their relationship with those in neighbouring Nordic counties. In particular, she took a special interest in Sámi silverware. She went on to research the Swedish colonization of the San Joaquin Valley in California. In 1981, she was appointed professor of ethnology at Umeå University where she remained until her retirement in 1990, both teaching and undertaking further research.
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#835

K. Tsianina Lomawaima

#113779
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
K. Tsianina Lomawaima is an interdisciplinary researcher of Indigenous Studies, anthropology, history, and political science. She is a professor in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. She specializes in the interaction between sovereign Native nations and U.S. federalism, the status of Native people as U.S. citizens, and federal Indian policy particularly in education. Her historical focus is the early 20th century. From 1972 to 1974, Lomawaima studied art and pre-medical studies at DePauw University. In 1976 she obtained a B.A. degree in anthropology at the University of Arizona, followed by an M.A.
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#836

Katherine Spencer Halpern

#181233
Overall Influence
Katherine Spencer Halpern was an American anthropologist and educator. Early life Katherine Spencer was born in Reading, Massachusetts. She earned a bachelor's degree at Vassar College in 1935, and a master's degree at the University of Chicago in 1944, and completed doctoral studies at the University of Chicago in 1952 with a dissertation titled Mythology and Values: An Analysis of Navaho Chantway Myths.
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#837

Ann Wheeler Harnwell Ashmead

#180355
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (96 years)
Ann Wheeler Harnwell Ashmead is an American archaeologist who has co-authored comprehensive catalogues with the archaeologist Etruscologist Kyle Meredith Phillips, Jr. about the Greek Vase Painting collections of Bryn Mawr College and the Rhode Island School of Design . She has also written the main published catalogue for the Antiquities Collection of Haverford College . and many articles on Greek Vases.
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#838

Liv Nilsson Stutz

#173590
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (53 years)
Liv Nilsson Stutz is a full professor at Linnaeus University. She is a bioarchaeologist and archaeologist. Education She received her PhD in 2004 from Lund University. Career Nilsson Stutz is an editor of the journal Archaeological Dialogues. She was a panellist in the plenary session of the 2019 TAG conference.
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#839

Patricia Baker

#142133
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (58 years)
Patricia "Patty" Anne Baker is an American archaeologist and academic. She is Head of the Department of Classical & Archaeological Studies at the University of Kent and Senior Lecturer in Classical & Archaeological Studies.
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#840

Claudia Rapp

#82234
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
Claudia Rapp FBA is a German scholar of the Byzantine Empire. She is currently Professor of Byzantine Studies at the University of Vienna, a position she has held since 2011. Having studied at the Free University of Berlin, she then obtained her D.Phil. in Modern History at the University of Oxford in 1992. She was a Professor in the History Department of the University of California, Los Angeles between 1994 and 2011, before taking up her current post in Vienna. In 2012 she became the Director of the Division of Byzantine Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and became a Full Member of the Academy two years later.
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#841

Sofia Voutsaki

#148235
Overall Influence
Sofia Voutsaki is Professor of Greek Archaeology at the University of Groningen and a specialist in the archaeology of the Bronze Age Aegean and classical Greece. She has directed excavations and surveys in the Argolid and at the Mycenaean site of Ayios Vasileios near Sparta, and has also published works on social change, mortuary archaeology, archaeological science, and the history of 19th- and 20th-century Greek archaeology.
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#842

Maria Hopf

#103883
Overall Influence
1914 - 2008 (94 years)
Maria Hopf was a pioneering archaeobotanist, based at the RGZM, Mainz. Career Hopf studied botany from 1941–44, receiving her doctorate in 1947 on the subject of soil microbes. She then worked in phytopathology and plant physiology. From 1952–56 she studied glume wheat grain and glume anatomy at the Max Planck institute for Zuchtungsforschung in Berli-Dahlem. Hopf was introduced to the study of the history of cultivated plants by Elisabeth Schiemann. She then moved to the Romisch Germanisches Zentral Museum in Main, working first as a scientific assistant, before being appointed as the head of the newly founded division of archaeobotany in 1961.
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#843

Rosemary Hennessy

#101822
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Rosemary Hennessy is an American academic and socialist feminist. She is a Professor of English and Director of the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Rice University. She has been a part of the faculty at Rice since 2006.
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#844

Chiara Bonacchi

#178393
Overall Influence
Chiara Bonacchi is an archaeologist. She is Senior Lecturer at the University of Stirling. Career Bonacchi has a BA in Archaeology and an MA in Medieval Archaeology from the University of Florence. She gained her PhD in Public Archaeology from University College London. She is an International Executive Committee member of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies and sits on the advisory board of the Journal of Open Archaeology Data.
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#845

Adriana Kaplan Marcusán

Adriana Kaplan Marcusán
#160683
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Adriana Kaplan Marcusán is an Argentine anthropologist and Director of the NGO Wassu Gambia Kafo and the Wassu Foundation of the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She is expert in sexual and reproductive health with a focus on the prevention of female genital mutilation .
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#846

Joan J. Taylor

#171187
Overall Influence
1940 - 2019 (79 years)
Joan J. Taylor was an American archaeologist specialising in the prehistory of the British Isles. She was known for her work on Bronze Age gold working, especially her 1980 monograph Bronze Age Goldwork of the British Isles.
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#847

Louise Furey

#190039
Overall Influence
Margaret Louise Furey is a New Zealand archaeologist. Formerly a consulting archaeologist, she is now Curator of Archaeology at Auckland War Memorial Museum. Biography Furey completed her BA and MA at University of Auckland in anthropology . In 2005 she was awarded a Doctor of Science by the university for her research in archaeological science .
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#848

Nanno Marinatos

#59732
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Nanno Marinatos is Professor Emerita of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago, whose research focuses on the Minoan civilisation, especially Minoan religion.
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#849

Lamia Al-Gailani Werr

#80948
Overall Influence
1938 - 2019 (81 years)
Lamia Al-Gailani Werr was an Iraqi archaeologist specialising in ancient Mesopotamian antiquities. Al-Gailani was born in Baghdad and completed her education in Iraq and the United Kingdom. Her doctoral study of Old Babylonian cylinder seals was considered a landmark in the field. Based in London, in her later career she was known for maintaining links between British and Iraqi archaeology under the Saddam Hussein regime, and her efforts to preserve cultural heritage in the aftermath of the Iraq War. She was closely involved in the reconstruction of the National Museum of Iraq, where she had ...
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#850

Robbie Ethridge

#61664
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Robbie Franklyn Ethridge is an American anthropologist and author. She is a professor of anthropology at the University of Mississippi. Education In 1996, Ethridge received a PhD from the University of Georgia.
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