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 Criminal Justice,

#1

Freda Adler

#8213
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Freda Adler is a criminologist and educator, currently serving as professor emeritus at Rutgers University and a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She was President of the American Society of Criminology in 1994-1995. She has acted as a consultant to the United Nations on criminal justice matters since 1975, holding various roles within United Nations organizations. A prolific writer, Adler has published in a variety of criminological areas, including female criminality, international issues in crime, piracy, drug abuse, and social control theories.
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#2

Mimi Ajzenstadt

#20199
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Mimi Ajzenstadt is an Israeli criminologist who was named the Mildred and Benjamin Berger Chair in Criminology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and is the President of the Open University of Israel.
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#3

Marie-Andrée Bertrand

Marie-Andrée Bertrand
#41271
Overall Influence
1925 - 2011 (86 years)
Marie-Andrée Bertrand was a French-Canadian criminologist, a feminist and anti-prohibitionist. Biography Bertrand was born in Montreal and started her career as a social worker for female offenders, mainly sex workers. In 1963, she received a master's degree from the Université de Montréal. She went on to study criminology at the School of Criminology, University of California, Berkeley, where she got her Ph.D. in 1967. She held a professorship in criminology at the School of Criminology, Université de Montréal. She continued to work, until her death, doing research, teaching and publishing.
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#4

Cassia Spohn

#28471
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
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#5

Katheryn Russell-Brown

#50710
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Katheryn Russell-Brown is an American social scientist, professor of law and director of the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations at University of Florida Law School. Her main areas of expertise are race and crime, sociology of law and criminal law.
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#6

Dawn Song

#10608
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Dawn Song is a Chinese American academic and is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department. She received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2010.
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#7

Patricia Mayhew

#56801
Overall Influence
Patricia Mayhew is a British criminologist and civil servant. She was formerly the Deputy Head of the Crime and Criminal Justice Unit at the Home Office in the United Kingdom, as well as the director of the Crime and Justice Research Centre at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand from 2004 to 2008. Her other positions include working at the National Institute of Justice in Washington, D. C., United States and the Australian Institute of Criminology in Canberra, Australia. She was one of the designers of the original International Crime Victims Survey in 1982, and managed the survey until 2000.
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#8

Colleen M. Fitzpatrick

#26027
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Colleen M. Fitzpatrick is an American forensic scientist, genealogist and entrepreneur. She helped identify remains found in the crash site of Northwest Flight 4422, that crashed in Alaska in 1948, and co-founded the DNA Doe Project which identifies previously unidentified bodies and runs Identifinders International, an investigative genetic genealogy consulting firm which helps identify victims and perpetrators of violent crimes.
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#9

Joan McCord

#49815
Overall Influence
1930 - 2004 (74 years)
Joan Fish McCord was an American professor of Criminology at Temple University. Through her experimental studies of delinquency, including the Cambridge Somerville Youth Study, and her philosophical perspective, she made important contributions to the understanding of developmental criminology, the differing roles of mothers, fathers, and neighborhoods, and the importance of differentiating between discipline and punishment. McCord was a recipient of the Herbert Bloch Award from the American Society of Criminology. and the International Society of Criminologys Emile Durkheim prize.
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#10

Nicole Hahn Rafter

#62585
Overall Influence
1939 - 2016 (77 years)
Nicole Hahn Rafter was a feminist criminology professor at Northeastern University. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, achieved her Master of Arts in Teaching from Harvard University, and obtained a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from State University of New York in Albany. She began her career as a high school and college English professor and switched to criminal justice in her mid-thirties.
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#11

Shari Forbes

#43977
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Professor Shari L. Forbes is an Australian and Canadian forensic scientist and researcher. She is a thanatology expert on the decomposition of human bodies. She created a body farm in Australia and between 2019 and 2022 established a similar facility in Canada, connected to the Forensic Science department at Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières . As of January 2023, she is a full professor in chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Windsor, and is hoping to start the first body farm in Ontario in the coming years.
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#12

Joan Petersilia

#69012
Overall Influence
1951 - 2019 (68 years)
Joan Ramme Petersilia was an American criminologist and the Adelbert H. Sweet Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, as well as the faculty co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center. Education Petersilia received her B.A. from Loyola Marymount University in 1972 in sociology, her M.A. from Ohio State University in 1974, also in sociology, and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine in criminology, law & society in 1990.
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#13

Linda M. Williams

#48761
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Linda Meyer Williams is an American sociologist and criminologist. She is senior research scientist at Wellesley Centers for Women and director of the Justice and Gender-Based Violence Research Initiative. She is also professor emerita of criminal justice and criminology at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on child maltreatment, research methods, and gender, race and crime. Williams has researched in the field of psychology on topics including child abuse, family violence and violence against women, and trauma and memory .
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#14

Rebecca Bace

#19676
Overall Influence
1955 - 2017 (62 years)
Rebecca "Becky" Gurley Bace was an American computer security expert and pioneer in intrusion detection. She spent 12 years at the US National Security Agency where she created the Computer Misuse and Anomaly Detection research program. She was known as the "den mother of computer security". She was also influential in the early stages of intelligence community venture capital and was a major player in Silicon Valley investments in cyber security technology.
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#15

Mary Francesca Bosworth

Mary Francesca Bosworth
#94913
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
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#16

Rebecca Mercuri

#48760
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Rebecca Mercuri is a computer scientist specializing in computer security and computer forensics. She is considered a leading expert on electronic voting systems. Education Mercuri earned her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2000 after defending her thesis on electronic voting. She was a fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. From 2004–2005, she was a computer science fellow at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, focusing on transparency and trust in computational systems.
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#17

Sandra Walklate

#92173
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Sandra Walklate is a British criminologist. She is the Eleanor Rathbone Chair of Sociology at the University of Liverpool and President of the British Society of Criminology. In January 2014, she became the Editor in Chief of The British Journal of Criminology.
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#18

Anne Piehl

#93536
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Anne Morrison Piehl is an American economist and criminologist. She is a professor of economics at Rutgers University, the director of Rutgers' Program in Criminal Justice, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She joined Rutgers as an associate professor in 2005, and became a full professor there in 2012. Also in 2012, she became a fellow of the IZA Institute of Labor Economics. In 2020, she was named to the James Cullen Chair in Economics, where she will serve a five-year term. She served on the New Jersey Committee on Government Efficiency and Reform Correct...
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#19

Candice DeLong

#53694
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Candice DeLong is an American former FBI criminal profiler and bestselling author. DeLong was the lead profiler in San Francisco, California, and worked on the Unabomber case. Currently, she hosts the Investigation Discovery programs Deadly Women and Facing Evil with Candice DeLong, the Wondery podcast Killer Psyche, and the Discovery+ program The Deadly Type with Candice DeLong.
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#20

Catrien Bijleveld

#75043
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Catharina Christina Johanna Hermina "Catrien" Bijleveld is a Dutch criminologist. She is a professor of Research Methods in Criminology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Since August 2014 she is director of the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement.
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#21

Susanne Karstedt

#62370
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Susanne Karstedt is a German criminologist. She is a professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. Biography A native of Germany, Kartstedt trained in sociology at the University of Hamburg. Prior to joining Griffith University, she held positions at the University of Leeds, Keele University, Bielefield University, and the University of Hamburg.
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#22

Cindy Fazey

#24551
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Cindy Fazey is a criminologist and former Chief of Demand Reduction for the United Nations Drug Control Programme. She has been Professor of International Drug Policy at the University of Liverpool since 1998. Fazey has spoken in the past of "the complete failure of national and international drugs policies." She has also noted that the organization of the international drug control apparatus makes it difficult to reform the system. On 24 February 2004, Fazey gave a speech at the Perspective on Cannabis conference at Liverpool titled Can you hear the grass growing? Cannabis and the repatriatio...
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#23

Janet Lauritsen

#88736
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Janet Lynn Lauritsen is an American criminologist and the Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. Education and career Dr. Lauritsen received her B.A. , M.A. , and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After serving as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Illinois , she joined the Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis as an Assistant Professor in 1990. She was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 1996 as well as to full Professor in 2002.
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#24

Louise Shelley

#41484
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Louise Isobel Shelley is a university professor and Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Endowed Chair at the Schar School of Policy and International Affairs at George Mason University in Virginia. She is also founder and executive director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center .
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#25

Mariana Valverde

#60056
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Mariana Valverde is a Canadian criminologist and sociologist. She is currently a professor in the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto. Her research mainly focuses on the sociology of law. She is also an occasional contributor to Spacing magazine.
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#26

Kerry Carrington

#69564
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Kerry Lyn Carrington is an Australian criminologist, and an adjunct professor at the School of Law and Society at the University of the Sunshine Coast . She formerly served as head of the QUT School of Justice for 11 years from 2009 to 2021. She was editor-in-chief of the International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy. She is known for her work on gender and violence, feminist criminology, southern criminology, youth justice and girls' violence, and global justice and human rights.
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#27

Letizia Paoli

#79897
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Letizia Paoli is a criminologist, originally from Prato. Since 2006 she has been a professor of the Law Faculty at Leuven/Louvain University. She served, between 2009 and 2016, as chair of the sometimes troubled "Freiburg Sports Medicine Commission" at Freiburg University.
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#28

Joanna Shapland

#86247
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Joanna Shapland was born in 1950. She earned her B.A. from St. Hilda’s College, which was promoted to an M.A. She went on to earn a diploma in criminology from Darwin College before earning a PhD from Wolfson College. She has spent her career studying victimology and victimisation, exploring the restorative justice approaches employed by police officers and crime reduction programs, and engaging in longitudinal research into the life choices of adult offenders in their early twenties. Her efforts have yielded critically important insights into effective practices for restorative justice. She h...
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#29

Michelle Harvey

#89935
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (46 years)
Michelle Louise Harvey is an Australian forensic scientist specialising in forensic entomology . Her research uses insect DNA to identify maggots, which helps in estimating the time since death. Harvey has published widely on her research and been a guest speaker at many conferences. She is active in the promotion of science through public speaking engagements and the media.
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#30

Lorraine Mazerolle

Lorraine Mazerolle
#112222
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Lorraine Green Mazerolle is an Australian criminologist and professor at the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland, where she is also an affiliate professor at the Institute for Social Science Research. She is also a chief investigator in the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course, as well as a former Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow. She is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Experimental Criminology. She is also a fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and the Academy of Experimental Criminology.
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#31

Angela Hawken

#54831
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Angela Hawken is a professor of public policy and director of Litmus at the Marron Institute of Urban Management at New York University. Her research focuses primarily on drugs, crime, and corruption, and combines experimental and quantitative methods.
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#32

Lorie Fridell

#110885
Overall Influence
Lorie A. Fridell is an American criminologist known for her research on police, especially regarding racial profiling. She is an associate professor in the Department of Criminology at the University of South Florida , where she has taught since 2005. She was previously the research director at the Police Executive Research Forum for six years . She is the co-editor-in-chief of Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, along with her USF colleague Wesley Jennings.
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#33

Kjersti Ericsson

#84634
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Kjersti Ericsson is a Norwegian psychologist, criminologist, writer, poet and former politician. She is professor of criminology at the faculty of law of the University of Oslo. Ericsson obtained her cand.psychol. degree in 1969, and was a research assistant and lecturer at the department of psychology at the University of Oslo from 1969 to 1978. Since 1978, she has been employed with the department of criminology and sociology of law . She became an associate professor in 1981 and a professor in 1997.
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#34

Nicole Leeper Piquero

Nicole Leeper Piquero
#96004
Overall Influence
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#35

Anthea Hucklesby

#136667
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Anthea Hucklesby FAcSS FRSA is Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Birmingham where she holds a joint appointment in Birmingham Law School and the School of Social Policy. She was Head of the School of Social Policy at the University of Birmingham 2020–2022. She was a member of the Law School at the University of Leeds between 2003 and 2020 where she was latterly Pro-Dean for research and innovation in the Faculty of Social Sciences. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce .
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#36

Niamh Nic Daéid

#85111
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Niamh Nic Daéid is an Irish forensic scientist, and the Professor of Forensic Science and Director of Research at the University of Dundee. She earned a bachelor's degree in Chemistry and Mathematics from the Dublin Institute of Technology and Trinity College, Dublin, followed by a PhD in bio inorganic chemistry from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.
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#37

Gloria Laycock

#97434
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Gloria Laycock was the founding Director of the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science at University College London , and ran UCL's Centre for Security & Crime Science. She is an internationally renowned expert in crime prevention, and especially situational approaches which seek to design out situations which provoke crime.
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#38

Charis Kubrin

#61326
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Charis Elizabeth Kubrin is an American criminologist and Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine . Education and career After receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 2000, Kubrin taught at George Washington University for 11 years; she left George Washington University for UCI in the summer of 2011. In 2016, she and her UCI colleague Carroll Seron served as editors of a special issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science about prison realignment in California.
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#39

Joanna Rutkowska

Joanna Rutkowska
#35083
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (43 years)
Joanna Rutkowska is a Polish computer security researcher, primarily known for her research on low-level security and stealth malware, and as founder of the Qubes OS security-focused desktop operating system.
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#40

Denise Gottfredson

#88757
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Denise Claire Gottfredson is an American criminologist and professor in the department of criminal justice and criminology at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is an expert on school violence and juvenile delinquency. She is recognized for her research applying the techniques of program evaluation to certain crime prevention initiatives, such as Drug Abuse Resistance Education, the Strengthening Families Program, and the Baltimore City Drug Treatment Court. She has also researched the effects of school resource officers on schools, finding that such officers spend an average of about half of their time engaged in law enforcement activities.
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#41

Gail Anderson

Gail Anderson
#131718
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Gail S. Anderson is a forensic entomologist, academic, and associate director of the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. She is an instructor at the Canadian Police College, a fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and the Canadian Society of Forensic Science, as well as a member of the Canadian Identification Society and the International Association for Identification.
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#42

Joanne Belknap

#119628
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Joanne Elizabeth Belknap is an American criminologist and Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. Belknap was named a Fellow of the American Society of Criminology. She trained at Temple University's Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. She studies jail-to-community reentry and implementing college courses in prisons. She was awarded the 2009 Elizabeth D. Gee Memorial Lectureship Award, which recognizes efforts to advance women in academia, interdisciplinary scholarly contributions and distinguished teaching.
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#43

Valeria Vegh Weis

Valeria Vegh Weis
#17642
Overall Influence
Valeria Vegh Weis is an Argentinean-German Author. She specializes in criminology, criminal law, international criminal law and transitional justice. Vegh Weis is a Research Fellow at Konstanz Universität Zukunftskolleg, where she focuses on the role of victims organizations to confront state crimes. She is also an Adjunct Professor at Buenos Aires University and Quilmes National University. She is the Vice President of the Instituto Latinoamericano de Criminología y Desarrollo Social . Vegh Weis won several awards, including the Critical Criminology of the Year Award by the American Society ...
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#44

Donna M. Bishop

#139632
Overall Influence
Donna Marie Bishop is an American criminologist and emeritus professor at Northeastern University. Education and career Bishop received her Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Albany in 1982. She began working as a full professor at Northeastern in 1999. Prior to joining the faculty of Northeastern, she taught for 18 years in the state university system in Florida, including 13 years at the University of Florida Center for Studies in Criminology and Law, and 5 years at the University of Central Florida Department of Criminal Justice and Legal Studies., including the University of Ce...
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#45

Anastasia Powell

#136019
Overall Influence
Anastasia Powell is a feminist criminologist at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. Career Powell gained her PhD in criminology from the University of Melbourne in 2008 and has been a director of Our Watch since 2016 . Her doctoral research was published in the 2010 book Sex, Power and Consent: Youth Culture and the Unwritten Rules by Cambridge University Press. Powell's research specialises in policy and prevention concerning men's violence against women, with a particular focus on sexual violence and technology-facilitated abuse.
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#46

Lisa Stolzenberg

#148839
Overall Influence
Lisa Stolzenberg is an American criminologist. She is a professor in, and chair of, the Department of Criminal Justice at Florida International University . Education and career Stolzenberg attended the University of Florida, where she received her B.S. in criminal justice in 1985. She went on to receive her M.S. and Ph.D. in criminology from Florida State University in 1986 and 1993, respectively. Before joining FIU, she held multiple other positions, including professor of public policy at Indiana University – Purdue University Fort Wayne.
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#47

Miren Ortubay Fuentes

#70070
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Miren Ortubay Fuentes is a Spanish lawyer and criminologist, as well as a professor at the University of the Basque Country , specializing in gender-related violence and prisoners' rights. Biography Ortubay Fuentes graduated in law from the University of Deusto in 1980, and holds a Ph.D. in law from the same university. Her 1994 doctoral thesis was entitled, . She holds a diploma in Criminology from the Complutense University of Madrid, and did postgraduate studies in criminology at the university of Louvain-la-Neuve .
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#48

Alice Yotopoulos-Marangopoulos

#107878
Overall Influence
1917 - 2018 (101 years)
Alice Yotopoulos-Marangopoulos was a Greek lawyer and criminologist. Career Born Aliki Giotopoulou , the daughter of a lawyer, she served as Professor of Criminology, President of the Hellenic Society of Criminology, board member of the International Society of Criminology, lawyer at the Supreme Court, Vice President of the Bar Association of Athens, President of the Panteion University, President of the National Commission for Human Rights and as the 10th President of the International Alliance of Women . She was founder and President of the Marangopoulos Foundation for Human Rights.
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#49

Tracey McIntosh

Tracey McIntosh
#91812
Overall Influence
Tracey Kathleen Dorothy McIntosh is a New Zealand sociology and criminology academic. She is of Māori descent and is currently a Professor of Indigenous Studies and Co-Head of Te Wānanga o Waipapa at the University of Auckland.
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#50

Winifred Cavenagh

#85974
Overall Influence
1908 - 2004 (96 years)
Winifred Elizabeth Cavenagh was a British criminologist, social scientist, and academic. She joined the University of Birmingham as a lecturer in social studies in 1946 and was made Professor of Social Administration and Criminology in 1972: she retired from academia in 1976 and was appointed professor emeritus. Outside of her university career, she served as a local magistrate, on numerous boards, and, after study law and qualifying, worked as a barrister.
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