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.

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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Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Communications,

#401

Ellen Ruppel Shell

#24113

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Ellen Ruppel Shell is a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, and professor of science journalism. Biography Shell was born in Auburn, New York, United States. In 1974, Shell received a B.A. degree from the University of Rochester.

#402

Judy Muller

#47869

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Judy Muller is an American journalist. She has been a correspondent for ABC News since 1990, contributing reports to such programs as Nightline and World News Tonight. She was a regular contributor to National Public Radio's Morning Edition program. Previous to her employment with ABC, she worked for CBS News, contributing to CBS News Sunday Morning and the CBS Weekend News on television, as well as a regular radio feature, First Line Report.

#403

Heidi Harley

#62903

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Heidi Britton Harley is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona. Her areas of specialization are formal syntactic theory, morphology, and lexical semantics. Career Harley was born in Oregon, but was raised in St. John's, Newfoundland. She earned her B.A. in Linguistics and English at Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1991. She received her Ph.D. in Linguistics and Philosophy in 1995 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, under the supervision of Alec Marantz.

#404

Lenore Grenoble

#49321

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Lenore A. Grenoble is an American linguist specializing in Slavic and Arctic Indigenous languages. She is currently the John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor and chair at University of Chicago.

#405

Eni Orlandi

#46417

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Eni de Lourdes Puccinelli Orlandi is a Brazilian researcher with great influence in French Discourse Analysis, being the one to bring it to Brazil by translating to Portuguese Michel Pêcheux's books and articles.

#406

Juanita León

#63295

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Juanita León García is a Colombian journalist, writer, and public speaker. She is best known as the founder and director of the news website La Silla Vacía. Biography León obtained a law degree at the University of the Andes in Bogotá and an M.S. in Journalism from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York. She worked as a reporter on the Wall Street Journal Americas before returning to Colombia in 1998.

#407

Starr Roxanne Hiltz

#11214

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Starr Roxanne Hiltz is a retired Distinguished Professor of Information Science/Information Systems at New Jersey Institute of Technology . She, along with Murray Turoff , are the authors of The Network Nation, a book that is described as "the seminal book that helped define the electronic frontier".

#408

Chantal Akerman

Chantal Akerman

#43493

Overall Influence

1950 - 2015 (65 years)

Chantal Anne Akerman was a Belgian film director, screenwriter, artist, and film professor at the City College of New York. She is best known for her films Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles , News from Home , and Je Tu Il Elle ; the first of these was ranked the greatest film of all time in Sight & Sound magazine's 2022 "Greatest Films of All Time" critics poll, making her the first woman to top the poll. The latter two films also rank lower in the same poll.

#409

Ava DuVernay

#22104

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Ava Marie DuVernay is an American filmmaker. She is a recipient of a Primetime Emmy Award, a NAACP Image Award, a BAFTA Film Award and a BAFTA TV Award, as well as a nominee of an Academy Award and Golden Globe.

#410

Doireann MacDermott

#53691

Overall Influence

1923 - Present (101 years)

Doireann MacDermott is an Irish translator, writer, an academic in the field of Spanish philology, and a retired professor of English studies at the University of Barcelona. She pioneered the study of the language and literature of the English-speaking countries of the former Commonwealth.

#411

Gayle King

#29064

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Gayle King is an American television personality, author and broadcast journalist for CBS News, co-hosting its flagship morning program, CBS Mornings, and before that its predecessor CBS This Morning. She is also an editor-at-large for O, The Oprah Magazine.

#412

Anna Siewierska

#61432

Overall Influence

1955 - 2011 (56 years)

Anna Siewierska was a Polish-born linguist who worked in Australia, Poland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. She was professor of linguistics at Department of Linguistics and English Language Lancaster University and a leading specialist in language typology.

#413

Gesche Joost

#13480

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Gesche Joost is a German design researcher. Early life and education Gesche Joost studied design at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences and completed her PhD in Rhetoric at the University of Tübingen.

#414

Jacquelyn Schachter

#63474

Overall Influence

1901 - 2011 (110 years)

Jacquelyn E. Schachter was professor emerita of linguistics at the University of Oregon. She received her Ph.D. in 1971 from UCLA, with a dissertation entitled, "Presuppositional and Counterfactual Conditional Sentences."

#415

Renée Fleming

#33999

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Renée Lynn Fleming is an American soprano, known for performances in opera, concerts, recordings, theater, film, and at major public occasions. A recipient of the National Medal of Arts, Fleming has been nominated for 18 Grammy Awards and has won five times. In June 2023, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced that Fleming will be one of the five artists recognized at the 2023 Kennedy Center Honors. Other notable honors won by Fleming have included the Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur from the French government, G...

#416

Wendy Hiller

#48050

Overall Influence

1912 - 2003 (91 years)

Dame Wendy Margaret Hiller, was an English film and stage actress who enjoyed a varied acting career that spanned nearly 60 years. Writer Joel Hirschorn, in his 1984 compilation Rating the Movie Stars, described her as "a no-nonsense actress who literally took command of the screen whenever she appeared on film". Despite many notable film performances, Hiller chose to remain primarily a stage actress.

#417

Inga-Stina Ewbank

#51991

Overall Influence

1932 - 2004 (72 years)

Inga-Stina Ewbank SBS was a Swedish-born academic and educator in Great Britain, Munich, Hong Kong and the United States, as well as an author and translator. She is believed to have been to date the only holder of an English chair of English Literature to have spoken no English until the age of 19 .

#418

Dora Sakayan

#53470

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

Dora Sakayan , Professor of German Studies , McGill University. Specializing initially as a Germanist, today she is also known for her work in various areas of Applied Linguistics and Armenology. Sakayan is noted for pioneering Armenology in Canada and for her books and articles published in her series "Armenian Studies for the English-speaking World."

#419

Lily Wong Fillmore

#56871

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Lilly Wong Fillmore is an American linguist. She is Professor Emerita in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research has focused on second language learning and teaching and on education in language minority communities.

#420

Christina Kramer

#36762

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Christina Elizabeth Kramer is Professor of Slavic and Balkan languages and linguistics at the University of Toronto and Chair of the university's Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures which is part of the Faculty of Arts and Science.

#421

Janet Baker

#59740

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (91 years)

Dame Janet Abbott Baker is an English mezzo-soprano best known as an opera, concert, and lieder singer. Baker is particularly closely associated with baroque and early Italian opera and the works of Benjamin Britten. During her career, which lasted from the 1950s to the 1980s, she was considered an outstanding singing actress and widely admired for her dramatic intensity, perhaps best represented in her famous portrayal as Dido, the tragic heroine of Berlioz's magnum opus, Les Troyens. As a concert performer, Baker was noted for her interpretations of the music of Gustav Mahler and Edward Elgar.

#422

Yoko Matsuoka McClain

#39482

Overall Influence

1924 - 2011 (87 years)

Yoko Matsuoka McClain was a Japanese-born American professor of Japanese language and literature at the University of Oregon. She was the granddaughter of Japanese novelist, Natsume Sōseki, from her maternal lineage.

#423

Eve V. Clark

#58209

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Eve V. Clark is a British-born American linguist. Clark's research focuses on first language acquisition, especially the acquisition of meaning. She has done extensive observational and experimental research. She has also worked on the acquisition and use of word-formation, including comparative studies of English and Hebrew in children and adults. Some of her current studies examine what children can learn about conventional ways to say things based on adult responses to child errors during acquisition. She has studied the pragmatics of coining words.

#424

Agnieszka Holland

Agnieszka Holland

#32399

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Agnieszka Holland is a Polish film and television director and screenwriter, best known for her political contributions to Polish cinema. She began her career as an assistant to directors Krzysztof Zanussi and Andrzej Wajda, and emigrated to France shortly before the 1981 imposition of the martial law in Poland.

#425

Marie Wilson

#51152

Overall Influence

Marie Wilson is a journalist and public administrator who served as one of three commissioners of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada . Born in Petrolia, Ontario, Wilson holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in French language and literature and a Master of Arts degree in journalism, both from the University of Western Ontario. She spent over 35 years working in journalism for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, including as regional director for CBC North and as adviser to the South African Broadcasting Corporation. In 2015, she served as a professor of practice at McGill University.

#426

Monik Charette

#64598

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Monik Charette is a French-Canadian linguist and phonologist who taught at SOAS the University of London, in the United Kingdom. She specializes in phonology, morphophonology, stress systems, vowel harmony, syllabic structure and word-structure, focusing on Altaic languages, Turkish, and French.

#427

Madeleine Mathiot

#57270

Overall Influence

1927 - 2020 (93 years)

Madeleine Mathiot was a Professor emerita of Linguistics at the University at Buffalo in Buffalo, New York. Mathiot received her Ph.D. in 1966 from the Catholic University of America with a dissertation entitled, "An approach to the study of language and culture relations." She is best known for her work on the O'odham language , linguistic meaning, and conversation analysis. In 1973 she published A Dictionary of Papago Usage which was based on her work with O'odham-language speakers in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The Arizona Daily Star lauded it as "probably the finest dictionary compile...

#428

Maddy Prior

#57419

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Madelaine Edith Prior MBE is an English folk rock singer, best known as the lead vocalist of Steeleye Span. She was born in Blackpool and moved to St Albans in her teens. Her father, Allan Prior, was co-creator of the police drama Z-Cars. She was married to Steeleye bass guitarist Rick Kemp, and their daughter, Rose Kemp, is also a singer. Their son, Alex Kemp, is, like his father, a guitarist and has deputised for his father playing bass guitar for Steeleye Span. She was part of the singing duo 'Mac & Maddy', with Mac MacLeod. She then performed with Tim Hart and recorded two albums with him, before they helped to found the group Steeleye Span, in 1969.

#429

Jean Ritchie

#57441

Overall Influence

1922 - 2015 (93 years)

Jean Ruth Ritchie was an American folk singer, songwriter, and Appalachian dulcimer player, called by some the "Mother of Folk". In her youth she learned hundreds of folk songs in the traditional way , many of which were Appalachian variants of centuries old British and Irish songs, including dozens of Child Ballads. In adulthood, she shared these songs with wide audiences, as well as writing some of her own songs using traditional foundations.

#430

Amy B. Jordan

#75466

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Amy B. Jordan is a Professor and Chair of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University. Her research and teaching focuses on the role of media in the lives of children and their families, and the potential for communication messages to address health risk behaviors.

#431

Madeleine Blais

Madeleine Blais

#41292

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Madeleine Blais is an American journalist, author and professor in the University of Massachusetts Amherst's journalism department. As a reporter for the Miami Herald, Blais earned the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 1980 for "Zepp's Last Stand", a story about a self-declared pacifist and subsequently dishonorably discharged World War I veteran. Blais has worked at The Boston Globe , The Trenton Times and the Miami Herald . She has also published articles in The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Northeast Magazine in the Hartford Courant, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Newsday, Nieman Reports, the Detroit Free Press and the San Jose Mercury News.

#432

Ingrid Piller

#58542

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Ingrid Piller is an Australian linguist, who specializes in intercultural communication, language learning, multilingualism, and bilingual education. Piller is Distinguished Professor at Macquarie University and an elected fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Piller serves as Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal Multilingua and as founding editor of the research dissemination site Language on the Move. She is a member of the Australian Research Council College of Experts.

#433

Yasmin Jiwani

#46177

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Yasmin Jiwani is a feminist academic and activist. In her research, she examines the intersectionality of race and gender in media narratives of violence against women and representations of racialized peoples. Currently, Dr. Jiwani is a full professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec. She is the author of Discourses of Denial: Mediations of Race, Gender and Violence.

#434

Sandrine Bonnaire

Sandrine Bonnaire

#62610

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Sandrine Bonnaire is a French actress, film director and screenwriter who has appeared in more than 40 films. She won the César Award for Most Promising Actress for À Nos Amours , the César Award for Best Actress for Vagabond and the Volpi Cup for Best Actress for La Cérémonie . Her other films include Under the Sun of Satan , Monsieur Hire , East/West and The Final Lesson .

#435

Stephanie Gosk

#46700

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Education Gosk graduated high school in 1990 from Phillips Academy. She then began her college career at Middlebury College in Vermont, but decided she wanted to experience college in a large city so she chose to transfer to Georgetown University in Washington D.C. During her time there, Gosk spent a semester abroad in Florence, Italy. After graduating Georgetown in 1994 with a bachelor's degree in economics, she spent time in the Dominican Republic as a Peace Corps volunteer.

#436

Lisel Mueller

#17828

Overall Influence

1924 - 2020 (96 years)

Lisel Mueller was a German-born American poet, translator and academic teacher. Her family fled the Nazi regime, and she arrived in the U.S. in 1939 at the age of 15. She worked as a literary critic and taught at the University of Chicago, Elmhurst College and Goddard College. She began writing poetry in the 1950s and published her first collection in 1965, after years of self-study. She received awards including the National Book Award in 1981 and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1997, as the only German-born poet awarded that prize.

#437

Elaine May

#23514

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Elaine Iva May is an American comedian, filmmaker, playwright, and actress. She first gained fame in the 1950s for her improvisational comedy routines with Mike Nichols, before transitioning her career regularly breaking the mold as a writer and director of several critically acclaimed films. She has received numerous awards, including a BAFTA Award, a Grammy Award, and a Tony Award. She was honored with the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2013, and an Honorary Academy Award in 2022.

#438

Danyel Smith

#19652

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Danyel Smith Wilson is an American magazine editor, journalist, and novelist . Smith is the former and first African-American editor of Billboard and Vibe magazine, respectively. She is author of two novels and a history of African-American women in pop music.

#439

Vera Rich

#55492

Overall Influence

1936 - 2009 (73 years)

Vera Rich was a British poet, journalist, historian, and translator from Belarusian and Ukrainian. Biography Born in London in April 1936, she studied at St Hilda's College of the University of Oxford and Bedford College, London. In 1959, her poetry attracted the attention of the editors of John O'London's Weekly and the following year her first collection of verse, Outlines, was privately produced and received favourable reviews, selling out within six months.

#440

Aparna Sen

#34351

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Aparna Sen is an Indian film director, screenwriter and actress who is known for her work in Bengali cinema. She has received several accolades as an actress and filmmaker, including nine National Film Awards, five Filmfare Awards East and thirteen Bengal Film Journalists' Association Awards. For her contribution in the field of arts, the Government of India honoured her with Padma Shri, the country's fourth highest civilian award.

#441

Maria Laurino

#39278

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Maria Laurino is an American journalist, essayist, memoirist, and former political speechwriter. Early life and education Maria Laurino, a third generation Italian-American, grew up in North Jersey. She graduated from Georgetown University and received her graduate degree in English literature from New York University. In 2018, Laurino was honored as a Cavaliere dell'Ordine della Stella d'Italia by the Italian Consul General Francesco Genuardi on behalf of Italian President Sergio Mattarella.

#442

Nancy Skolos

#65481

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Nancy Skolos is an American graphic designer, author, educator and co-founder of Skolos-Wedell studio. Skolos is best known for her work at Rhode Island School of Design where she has served as the graphic design department head.

#443

Shin Shifra

#34007

Overall Influence

1931 - 2012 (81 years)

Shin Shifra ; is the pen name of Shifra Shifman Shmuelevitch , a poet, translator, writer, editor and literary academic. Shifra won multiple literature awards. Biography Shin Shifra, the fifth of eight children, was born in Tel Aviv and raised in Bnei Brak, in a veteran Jerusalemite family. Her father was among the first new age Jewish teachers in The Land of Israel. She studied at the Talpiot high school gymnasium for girls in Tel Aviv, and graduated from the Levinsky Seminar for Teachers in Jaffa. In addition, she studied Kabbalah, Jewish philosophy, Hebrew literature, Sumerian and Akkadian....

#444

Carrie Underwood

#12470

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (41 years)

Carrie Marie Underwood is an American country singer. She rose to prominence after winning the fourth season of American Idol in 2005. Underwood's single "Inside Your Heaven" made her the first country artist to debut atop the Billboard Hot 100 chart and the only solo country artist in the 2000s to have a number-one song on the Hot 100. Her debut album, Some Hearts , was bolstered by the successful crossover singles "Jesus, Take the Wheel" and "Before He Cheats", becoming the best-selling solo female debut album in country music history. She won three Grammy Awards for the album, including Best New Artist.

#445

Lisa Green

#58929

Overall Influence

Dr. Lisa Green is a linguist specializing in syntax and African American English . She is a professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In July 2020 she was awarded the title of Distinguished Professor.

#446

Karine Nahon

#34896

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Karine Nahon is an Israeli information scientist in the area of information, technology, and society. She holds a dual position as an associate professor in The Information School at University of Washington and at Reichman University. In July 2017, Nahon was named #24 on Forbes' list of 50 Most Influential Women in Israel. Her co-authored book "Going Viral" was awarded Best Information Science Book Award by the Association for Information Science and Technology and the 2014 Outstanding Academic Title Award by the American Library Association.

#447

Usha Lee McFarling

#14904

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (123 years)

Usha Lee McFarling is an American science reporter who is an Artist In Residence at the University of Washington Department of Communication. She won a 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. University of Washington Department of Communication.

#448

Valerie Plame

#26556

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Valerie Elise Plame is an American writer, spy novelist, and former Central Intelligence Agency officer. As the subject of the 2003 Plame affair, also known as the CIA leak scandal, Plame's identity as a CIA officer was leaked to and subsequently published by Robert Novak of The Washington Post. She described this period and the media firestorm that ensued as "mortifying, and I think I was in shock for a couple years".

#449

Jean D'Costa

#55505

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Jean Constance D'Costa is a Jamaican children's novelist, linguist, and professor emeritus. Her novels have been praised for their use of both Jamaican Creole and Standard English. Early life and education Jean Constance Creary was born in St. Andrew, Jamaica, the youngest of three children to parents who were school teachers. Her father was also a Methodist minister. They moved to the capital, Kingston in 1944, and then to St. James and Trelawny. She attended rural elementary schools, and then St. Hilda's High School in Brown's Town, St. Ann from 1949 to 1954 on a government merit scholarship.

#450

Yuezhi Zhao

#45133

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Yuezhi Zhao is a Canadian sociologist. She is a Canada Research Chair in Communication and Media Studies and the founder of the Global Media Monitoring Laboratory at Simon Fraser University. Her research takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the relationship between communication and policy in US-China relations, which she regularly publishes research in both English and Chinese, and she is a noted commentator on the policies pursued by the People's Republic of China.

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