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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School

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Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Literature,

#2301

Åse Hiorth Lervik

#182626

Overall Influence

1933 - 1997 (64 years)

Åse Hiorth Lervik was a Norwegian literary researcher. Biography Lervik was born in Oslo on 2 June 1933. Her doctorate thesis from 1971 was a study on Henrik Ibsen's play Brand. She was professor at the University of Tromsø from 1972. She was secretary for Edda. Scandinavian Journal of Literary Research from 1962, and editor of the journal from 1972 to 1985.

#2302

Rose Leiman Goldemberg

#178359

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (96 years)

Rose Leiman Goldemberg is an American playwright, screenwriter, poet, and author of fiction and non-fiction books and stories. Goldemberg's Letters Home, about the life of Sylvia Plath and her mother, has been translated into numerous languages and been honored all over the world. Like Letters Home, Goldemberg's plays frequently incorporate biographical material, as with Sophie , about entertainer Sophie Tucker; and Picon Pie , about Yiddish theater actress Molly Picon. Her plays have been produced widely Off-Broadway, in venues throughout the United States, and internationally.

#2303

Myra L. Uhlfelder

#168460

Overall Influence

1923 - 2011 (88 years)

Myra L. Uhlfelder was a professor of classics at Bryn Mawr. She is known for her work on classical and Medieval Latin. Career Uhlfelder studied at the University of Cincinnati , and completed a PhD at Bryn Mawr in 1952 under the supervision of Berthe Marie Marti. Her dissertation was published as 'De proprietate sermonum uel rerum. A Study and Critical Edition of a Set of Verbal Distinctions in the series Papers and monographs of the American Academy in Rome. She taught at Sweet Briar College for 1950-2 and at the State University of Iowa, 1952–63, where she became assistant professor. In 196...

#2304

Ann Catrin Apstein-Müller

#185111

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Ann Catrin Apstein-Müller was born on 13 April 1973 in Gräfelfing, near Munich, Bavaria, and is a German poet and translator. She lives and works in Augsburg. Life and work Ann grew up in a Munich suburb, where she finished school with the Abitur in 1992. After that she studied German literature and American literature and Media law at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and trained as a Bookseller. After ten years of part-time work in a bookshop, which she used to build up her freelance business, she now works as a freelance translator and editor for literary and specialized texts. She st...

#2305

Martha Rhodes

#133427

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (123 years)

Martha Rhodes is an American poet, teacher, and publisher. Biography Martha Rhodes was born in Boston, Massachusetts. She received her B.A. from The New School for Social Research and her M.F.A. from the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. She has taught at The New School University, Emerson College, and at the University of California, Irvine's MFA Program. She teaches at the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers A founding editor of Four Way Books, she serves as Publisher and Executive Editor for the award-winning literary press. She has been interviewed in The New York T...

#2306

Martha Reeves

#102926

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Martha Reeves is a vowed Anglican solitary , with Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, as bishop-protector. A graduate of the Madeira School , she is also a Stanford-educated professor of theology who has written numerous articles and books under the name "Maggie Ross" as well as translated a number of Carthusian Novice Conferences. Reeves, at one time Desmond Tutu's spiritual director, was Bell Distinguished Professor in Anglican and Ecumenical Studies appointed to the Department of Philosophy and Religion, Kendall College of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tulsa. In 199...

#2307

Kathy Eden

#180449

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Kathy Eden is an American professor of literature. She is the Chavkin Family Professor of English and Professor of Classics at Columbia University. Biography Eden grew up on Long Island, the daughter of a surgeon and a homemaker. She obtained her BA from Smith College, where she studied under Karl Paul Donfried, and PhD in comparative literature from Stanford University. Her research has included Renaissance humanism and the history of rhetorical and poetic theory in antiquity. She also teaches the Core Curriculum for Columbia undergraduates. Her students in academia included former Modern Lan...

#2308

Susan Yuzna

#181613

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Susan Yuzna, a native of Minnesota, is an American poet and professor. Life She has a B.A. in English from the University of Iowa, and an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Montana. She has been resident at several artist colonies, including Yaddo, and MacDowell. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

#2309

Barbara Samson

#91608

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Barbara Samson is a French poet who was infected with HIV at the age of seventeen. Her story was made into the French television film Being Seventeen. Samson sought treatment for an eating disorder at the age of seventeen. While staying in a French health clinic, she fell in love with another patient who wrote love poems for her. She later discovered that the poems were translations of Jim Morrison's lyrics of The Doors' rock songs. Her lover had also concealed his HIV-positive status, which Samson in turn contracted. She told nobody about her illness, because she was so ashamed. Barbara met ...

#2310

Huh Young-ja

#186195

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Introduction Huh Young-ja is a Korean female poet. She is called "The Poet of Love and Moderation,"embodying Oriental lyricism such as han', love and waiting in a highly condensed beauty. She is regarded as a unique poet who combines traditional and modern sentiments.

#2311

Françoise Lionnet

#185455

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Françoise Lionnet serves as acting chair of the Committee on Degrees in Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality at Harvard University, where she is professor of Romance languages and literatures, comparative literature, and African and African American studies. She is distinguished research professor of comparative literature and French and Francophone studies at UCLA, and a research associate of the Centre for Indian Studies in Africa at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. She served as director of the African Studies Center and Program Co-Director of UCLA's Mellon Postdoctoral Fell...

#2312

Julia Ferrer

#106282

Overall Influence

1925 - 1995 (70 years)

Julia Ferrer , born in Lima, Peru, was a Peruvian poet and writer. She was fluent in English and French, and spoke some German, Portuguese and Quechua. Ferrer took courses in theater at the National Institute of Dramatic Art , and took courses at the School of Fine Arts of Lima.

#2313

Christine Eyene

#165121

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Christine Eyene is a Cameroonian art critic, art historian, and curator. Biography Born in 1970 in Paris, Christine Eyene studied the history of art at the Panthéon-Sorbonne University, also in Paris. She obtained a Diplôme d’Études Approfondies in 1999, under the supervision of , and wrote a dissertation entitled Image and Body: representing the body in South African art from the 1960s to 1990s. She then pursued research on contemporary South African art with, as her main subject, the history of artists exiled during apartheid and their cultural exchange with the black diaspora in France and England.

#2314

Kerri French

#181630

Overall Influence

Kerri French is an American poet. Life Originally from North Carolina, she received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She graduated from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro's Master of Fine Arts program in 2006. She has taught at Boston University and Mount Ida College. Her latest project, for DIAGRAM magazine, is a series of poems focused on British singer Amy Winehouse.

#2315

Christina Duhig

#175472

Overall Influence

Christina Duhig is an American poet. Life Originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she studied at Case Western Reserve University and received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. She has taught at North Carolina A&T State University. and John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She currently lives in Brooklyn and teaches at Bronx Community College and Fordham University.

#2316

Tamsin Wilton

#168081

Overall Influence

1952 - 2006 (54 years)

Tamsin Elizabeth Wilton was an English lesbian activist, and the UK’s first Professor of Human Sexuality. She researched and wrote extensively about gay and lesbian health, the process of transitioning to lesbianism, and the marginalisation of lesbian issues within sexuality studies.

#2317

Robyn Rowland

#177144

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Robyn Lea Rowland is an Irish Australian poet, writer and retired academic. Biography Rowland, a third generation Irish Australian, was born in Sydney, New South Wales in 1952. While researching her PhD, Rowland worked as a part-time tutor at the University of Wollongong.

#2318

Eunice Askov

#187149

Overall Influence

Eunice Nicholson Askov is an American literary scholar focusing on adult and family literacy, currently a Distinguished Professor Emerita of Education at Pennsylvania State University. She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1969. She is an honorary affiliate of the International Reading Association and a 2007 inductee into the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame.

#2319

Alice Elliott Dark

#178992

Overall Influence

Alice Elliott Dark is a writer of short stories, novels and essays. She is the author of the story collections Naked to the Waist and In the Gloaming and the novels Think of England and Fellowship Point, published by Scribner/Marysue Rucci Books in July 2022.

#2320

Susan Wood

#85920

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Susan Wood is an American poet and the Gladys Louise Fox Professor of English at Rice University. Life Wood received her B.A. from East Texas State University and her M.A. from University of Texas at Arlington before continuing her graduate studies at Rice University.

#2321

Stephania Bell

#24253

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Stephania Bell is an American physical therapist who has become an author, as well as both on-air and online sports commentator at ESPN where she serves as an American football injury analyst. Career Bell formerly served as an injury analyst for KFFL, RotoWire and XM Radio. Hired in 2007, she actively blogs National Football League injury analysis for ESPN where she is a regular columnist. Bell complements on-air journalists with analysis of breaking news. She serves as a co-host of Fantasy Focus on ESPN Radio and an analyst for SportsNation on ESPN.com. She co-authored The Clinical Orthopedic Assessment Guide.

#2322

Nancy Zafris

#104232

Overall Influence

Nancy Zafris is an American novelist and short story writer. She has won individual artist's grants, from the Massachusetts Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Ohio Arts Council. She was a senior Fulbright fellow, and taught at Masaryk University . She has taught at the University of Pittsburgh, Centre College, and Ohio State University.

#2323

Sanaa Shebbani

#183974

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Sanaa Shebbani is a Lebanese children's writer and translator. She wrote one play and has published more than 90 children's books. In 2010, UNESCO, Regional Bureau, Beirut, published her story book for youth " Hatta Ankoulouka Ila Alami" as she was chosen after attending a workshop as part of the program Beirut, World Book Capital, 2009: "Reinforcing the Cultural Diversity in the Storybooks Dedicated to Youth". In 2012, her book "What Have You Decided, Malik?" won the Sharjah Award for Children's Book. In 2017, her book "The Battle of Antara Ibn Shaddad" was shortlisted for Etisalat Award for Arabic Children's Literature in the Young Adult's Book category.

#2324

Patricia Colleen Murphy

Patricia Colleen Murphy

#183316

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Patricia Colleen Murphy is an American poet and teacher. She founded Superstition Review at Arizona State University, where she teaches creative writing and magazine production. She won the 2019 Press 53 Award for Poetry for her second collection Bully Love. She won the 2016 May Swenson Poetry Award judged by Stephen Dunn, and her poetry collection Hemming Flames was published by University Press of Colorado in summer 2016. Hemming Flames went on to win the 2017 Milt Kessler Award for Poetry. Her work has appeared in many literary journals, including The Iowa Review, Quarterly West, American P...

#2325

Sarah Broom

#180484

Overall Influence

1972 - 2013 (41 years)

Sarah Broom was a New Zealand poet, Oxford graduate, university lecturer and mother of three children. Her work included two books of poetry, Tigers at Awhitu and Gleam. After her early death from lung cancer, the Sarah Broom Poetry Prize, was established to remember and celebrate her life and work.

#2326

Elizabeth Wong

#155971

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Elizabeth "Libby" Wong Chien Chi-lien is a former civil servant and politician from Hong Kong, born in Shanghai, China. Wong holds New Zealand citizenship, and is currently residing in Sydney. She is now a popular fiction writer. Her novels in English and Chinese are Rainbow City and its sequel Flower Mountain. Elizabeth's husband is third generation Chinese New Zealanders, Elizabeth settled in Australia some years ago.

#2327

Kwon Teckyoung

#184238

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Teckyoung Kwon is a literary critic, translator and professor in English literature at the School of English, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, South Korea. Her research interests are psychoanalysis, ecology, American and British fiction, narrative theory, neuro-humanities, Korean literature and Dao.

#2328

Helga Tawil-Souri

#135358

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Helga Tawil-Souri is a Palestinian-American Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, an associate professor of Middle East and Islamic Studies and a Director of Graduate Studies New York University Steinhardt. Her work focuses on technology, media, culture, territory and politics, with a focus on Palestine and Israel.

#2329

Ursula Masson

#122460

Overall Influence

1945 - 2008 (63 years)

Ursula Masson , born Ursula O'Connor, was a Welsh academic and writer who worked closely with Jane Aaron and Honno Press/Gwasg Honno, the Welsh Women's Press, on the imprint Welsh Women's Classics – to bring back into print the works of forgotten Welsh women writers of the 19th and 20th centuries.

#2330

S. A. Stepanek

#184591

Overall Influence

1960 - 2019 (59 years)

Sally Anna Stepanek was an American poet. She graduated from the Iowa Writer's Workshop with an M.F.A. and from the University of Houston with a Ph.D. Stepanek taught at Wheaton College. She was on a panel at the 2007 Association of Writers & Writing Programs. Stepanek won the 2005 National Poetry Series award.

#2331

Lada Kaštelan

#187449

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Lada Kaštelan is a Croatian dramatist and screenwriter. Between 1987 and 2007, Kaštelan worked as a dramaturge at the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb. Since 2007, she works as a professor at the Academy of Dramatic Art, University of Zagreb.

#2332

Şirin Tekeli

#58506

Overall Influence

1944 - 2017 (73 years)

Şirin Tekeli was a feminist, academician, translator, writer, activist and one of the pioneers of second wave feminism in Turkey. Career In 1967, she returned to Turkey and became the first female academician to enter the Chair in political science at Istanbul University. In 1973 she obtained her PhD with a thesis on David Easton's System Theory. In 1978, she obtained her associate professor title with her, at the time "controversial", habilitation thesis on women’s participation to politics named "Kadınlar ve Siyasal Toplumsal Hayat". . This thesis, had a great effect on her ideology, she re...

#2333

Eri Watanabe

#162923

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Eri Watanabe, who was previously known as Eriko Watanabe, is a Japanese actress. She won the award for Best Supporting Actress at the 21st Hochi Film Awards for Shall We Dance?. Filmography Films Comic Magazine Crest of Betrayal Shall We Dance? Swing Girls - Sanae SuzukiMemories of Tomorrow Ichi Lady Maiko My Dad and Mr. Ito Survival Family Mary and the Witch's Flower - Banks Talking the Pictures Tezuka's Barbara Romance Doll Labyrinth of Cinema

#2334

Stacey Waite

#173032

Overall Influence

Stacey Waite is a poet—focusing on both slam and written verse—who also works as an Associate Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Waite's poetry often explores themes of the body—of the intersections of gender, sexuality, place and relationships. She has published four collections of poetry over the past several years.

#2335

Frances Chung

#68258

Overall Influence

Frances Chung is a Canadian ballet dancer. She is currently a principal dancer at the San Francisco Ballet. Early life Chung was born in Vancouver and is of Chinese descent. Her father worked for an electronic company, her mother was a cook, and her sister works in finance. She started ballet and playing the piano when she was five, at a community centre near her home. She attended Magee Secondary School and trained at Goh Ballet Academy. Though most of Chung's teachers are Chinese, she was trained in multiple dance styles, such as French, Russian and English. She also did contemporary, jazz, and Asian dance.

#2336

Kirstin Chen

#186271

Overall Influence

Kirstin Chen is a Singaporean writer. Biography Kirstin Chen was born and raised in Singapore. She moved to the United States at age 15 to attend boarding school, then attended Stanford University, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts. She has a Master of Fine Arts degree from Emerson College.

#2337

Lucy C. Turnbull

Lucy C. Turnbull

#180846

Overall Influence

1931 - 2019 (88 years)

Lucy Curtis Turnbull was an American classics scholar, and director of the University of Mississippi Museums from 1983 to 1990. Early life Lucy Curtis Turnbull was born in Lancaster, Ohio, the daughter of Donald Turnbull and Lucy Taylor Turnbull. She earned a bachelor's degree at Bryn Mawr College in 1952 and both master's and doctoral degrees from Radcliffe College. She focused her doctoral research on geometric bronzes in Greece, at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens.

#2338

Gwenaëlle Aubry

Gwenaëlle Aubry

#68264

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Gwenaëlle Aubry is a French novelist and philosopher. Biography After two years of preparatory classes at the Lycée Henri-IV in Paris, Aubry began her studies at the École Normale Supérieure in 1989 at the age of eighteen, earning an agrégation in Philosophy in 1992. She then received the Knox Scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, where she earned a Master of Philosophy. In 1999 she received a Doctorate in Philosophy from the Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne.

#2339

Jina Valentine

#177655

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (45 years)

Jina Valentine is a contemporary American visual artist whose work is informed by the techniques and strategies of American folk artists. She uses a variety of media to weave histories—including drawing, papermaking, found-object collage, and radical archiving.

#2340

Hilda Bastian

#75787

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Hilda Bastian is a health consumer advocate. Starting in Australia in the 1980s and 1990s and moving to Europe and the USA, she is involved in evidence-based medicine and communicating medical science to the public.

#2341

Angie Farrow

#178800

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Angela Rosina Farrow is a New Zealand academic and writer for theatre and radio. Born in the United Kingdom, Farrow was appointed professor emerita at Massey University in November 2022. She was promoted to full professor in 2011 and in the same year was awarded Massey University lecturer of the Year. Farrow has published books on the production of physical theatre as well as her own numerous plays for theatre and radio. In April 2015, her series of 10-minute-long sketches Together All Alone was performed at Bats Theatre in Wellington. In the 2021 New Year Honours, Farrow was appointed an Of...

#2342

Saralyn R. Daly

#137354

Overall Influence

1924 - Present (100 years)

Saralyn Ruth Daly was an American writer and translator. Early life and career Saralyn Ruth Daly was born on May 11, 1924, in Huntington, West Virginia. She earned a Ph.D from Ohio State University in English in 1950. The title of her doctoral dissertation was "The Historye of the Patriarks". After graduation she joined the faculty at Midwestern State University in the early 1950s.

#2343

Amy Wright

#185987

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Amy Wright is an American writer and editor. Early life and education Wright was born in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwest Virginia. She received a B.A. in English from the University of Virginia in 1997, an M.A. in English from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a Ph.D. from the University of Denver. In 2007, she joined the Creative Writing faculty of Austin Peay State University.

#2344

Sidnie White Crawford

#91568

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Sidnie White Crawford is professor emerita of Classics and Religious Studies at the University Of Nebraska-Lincoln. She specializes in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible. She also taught at St. Olaf College and Albright College. She has also been a visiting professor at Boston College.

#2345

Viktorija Daujotytė

Viktorija Daujotytė

#92752

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Viktorija Daujotytė-Pakerienė is a Lithuanian literary critic and philologist. She has written more than 30 scientific monographs, as well as essays and Lithuanian language textbooks for general education and higher education. She has also written about culture, feminism, and society. She was awarded the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas, the fourth degree of the Order of the Lithuanian National Culture and Art, Unity, and National Progress, and other prizes.

#2346

Deborah Kamen

#176072

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Deborah Kamen is Chair and Professor of Classics at the University of Washington. Her research is on Greek cultural and social history, with a particular focus on ancient slavery. Career Deborah Kamen read for her BA in Classical Languages at Bryn Mawr College in 1998, where she began studying Greek after learning Latin in high school. This was followed by an MSt in Greek History at New College, Oxford University in 1999, and an MA in Greek at the University of California Berkeley in 2000. In 2005 she completed a PhD in Classics at Berkeley, with a thesis titled "Conceptualizing manumission in...

#2347

Yvette Christiansë

#120081

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Yvette Christiansë is a South African-born poet and novelist. She currently lives in New York City and teaches at Barnard College. She has also taught at Fordham University, also in New York City. Biography Yvette Christiansë was born in South Africa while it was still under Apartheid, and, despite poor access to education, was interested in language and becoming a writer from a young age. At the age of 18, she emigrated with her mother and sister to Mbabane in Swaziland, where she lived until 1973. Following the move to Swaziland, she and her family moved to Australia in order to place further distance between themselves and the South African government.

#2348

Dana Levin

#188948

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Dana Levin is a poet and teaches Creative Writing at Maryville University in St. Louis, where she serves as Distinguished Writer in Residence. She also teaches in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. She lives in Saint Louis, Missouri.

#2349

Maggie Greenwald

Maggie Greenwald

#178782

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Maggie Greenwald is an American filmmaker. Most recognized as an independent writer and director, Greenwald’s most notable films include Sophie and the Rising Sun , starring an ensemble cast that included Margo Martindale, Julianne Nicholson, Lorraine Toussaint and Diane Ladd, Songcatcher starring Aidan Quinn and Janet McTeer and introducing Emmy Rossum, and The Ballad of Little Jo , starring Suzy Amis and Ian McKellen. She also directed an adaptation of Jim Thompson's The Kill-Off featuring an ensemble cast that included Cathy Haase and the film debut of Jorja Fox.

#2350

Elizabeth Kuti

#185242

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Elizabeth Kuti is an English actress and playwright. Life English-born Kuti graduated from Balliol College, Oxford with a degree in English, and completed her MA at King's College London. She is of partial Hungarian descent through her paternal grandfather, whose original surname Kipslinger was adapted to 'Kuti' to disguise its Germanic origins. In 1993 she moved to Ireland to study at Trinity College Dublin, where she wrote her doctoral thesis on eighteenth-century women playwrights. In October 2004, she joined the Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies, University of Essex.

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