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 Political Science,

#501

Judith Brett

#77655

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (76 years)

Judith Margaret Brett is an Emeritus Professor of politics at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. She retired from La Trobe in 2012, after a restructuring of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in which the School of which she was head was dismantled.

#502

Leonie Huddy

#77944

Overall Influence

Leonie Huddy is an Australian political scientist, currently a professor of political science at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She studies American patriotism and national identity, public opinion regarding the Iraq War, and political identity in areas like attitudes towards feminism and gendered perceptions about political candidates.

#503

Ruth Abbey

#69217

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (64 years)

Ruth Abbey is an Australian political theorist with interests in contemporary political theory, history of political thought and feminist political thought. She was a John Cardinal O'Hara, C.S.C. Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science of the University of Notre Dame.

#504

Ruth Mandel

#72572

Overall Influence

1938 - 2020 (82 years)

Ruth Mandel , usually published as Ruth B. Mandel, was an American political scientist. She was the Director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University for more than 20 years, where she was also a Professor of Politics.

#505

Gwendolen M. Carter

#89500

Overall Influence

1906 - 1991 (85 years)

Professor Gwendolen Margaret Carter was a Canadian-American political scientist. She was one of the founders of African Studies in the United States, past president of the African Studies Association and was among the most widely known scholars of African affairs in the twentieth century.

#506

Sim Sang-jung

#95960

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Sim Sang-jung is a South Korean politician and labor rights activist. She was one of the five major presidential candidates in the 2017 South Korean presidential election, running as the Justice Party's nominee. She again ran as the Justice Party's nominee in the 2022 South Korean presidential election, finishing in 3rd place.

#507

Dina Zinnes

#114155

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (90 years)

Dina A. Zinnes is an American political scientist. She is Professor Emerita in the Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois. Zinnes studies international relations, and was a pioneer in the use of mathematical models in political science research.

#508

Dawn Dekle

#25631

Overall Influence

Dawn Dekle is an American international educator formerly serving as the fourth president of the American University of Nigeria. Education Dawn Dekle completed her undergraduate studies at Texas A&M University, going on to earn a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Dartmouth College, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

#509

Karen Alter

#100705

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (60 years)

Karen J. Alter is an American academic, well known for her interdisciplinary work on international law's influence in international and domestic politics. Alter is a figure in comparative international courts and the politics of international regime complexity. Her early work focused on the European Court of Justice, a topic on which she published two books and many articles. Karen Alter is a Guggenheim Fellow, and the winner of a Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin. Alter has a courtesy appointment at Northwestern Law School. Fluent in French, Italian and German, Alter has conduc...

#510

Wendy Thomson

#71748

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (70 years)

Professor Wendy Thomson is a Canadian-born public administrator and social policy researcher and advisor who has worked in both Canada and the UK. Thomson was the managing director of Norfolk County Council from 2014 until the end of 2018. Since July 2019, she has served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of London.

#511

Evelin Lindner

#56470

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (71 years)

Evelin Gerda Lindner is a German-Norwegian medical doctor, psychologist, transdisciplinary scholar and author who is known for her theory of humiliation. Lindner is originally a physician and a clinical psychologist, and holds doctorates in both psychological medicine and social psychology. Her research focuses on human dignity, and she believes that the humiliation of honor and dignity may be among the strongest obstacles on the way to a decent world community. She founded the Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies network. Born in Germany, she is now mainly based in Norway, where she has partially lived since 1977.

#512

Margaret Clark

#68034

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (84 years)

Dame Margaret Clark is a New Zealand political science academic. She is currently an emeritus professor of politics at Victoria University of Wellington. Early life, family, and education Born in Wellington on 28 January 1941, Clark was educated at Wellington East Girls' College. She went on to study at Wellington Teachers' Training College and Victoria University College, completing a Bachelor of Arts in politics at the latter institution in 1960. After winning a Rotary Foundation Fellowship, she undertook further study at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur from 1962 to 1963, graduati...

#513

Najat Vallaud-Belkacem

#70886

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (48 years)

Najat Vallaud-Belkacem is a former Moroccan-French jurist and politician of the Socialist Party who was the first French woman to serve as Minister of Education, Higher Education, and Research in the governments of successive Prime Ministerss Manuel Valls and Bernard Cazeneuve from 2014 until 2017. Since 2020, she has been the director of the One Campaign in France.

#514

Mary Ann Casey

#94449

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (76 years)

Mary Ann Casey is an American retired diplomat who was a career Foreign Service Officer and U.S. Ambassador to Algeria and Tunisia . Life and career Casey was born in Boulder, Colorado on November 11, 1949. She graduated with a degree in international relations from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1970, and spent most of her overseas career in northern Africa. Her first assignment was as vice consul and political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Morocco; her most recent overseas position was Ambassador to Tunisia. In between, she spent time as a Watch Officer in the State Department O...

#515

Bev Perdue

#67735

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (78 years)

Beverly Eaves Perdue is an American businesswoman, politician, and member of the Democratic Party who served as the 73rd governor of North Carolina from 2009 to 2013. She was the first female governor of North Carolina.

#516

Katharina Holzinger

#106721

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (68 years)

Katharina Holzinger is a German political scientist with a focus on international politics. Since 2021, she is the Rector of the University of Konstanz. Academic career Holzinger studied political science, German studies and philosophy in Munich before earning her doctorate at the University of Augsburg in 1993. From 1993 to 1997 she was a senior researcher at the Berlin Social Science Center before joining the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn. In 2002 she completed her habilitation at the University of Bamberg. After a research stay as a Jean Monnet Fellow at t...

#517

Mabel Bianco

#71298

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (84 years)

Mabel Bianco is an Argentine physician who has devoted her career to fighting for women's access to improved health services and sex education. In 1989, she established the Foundation for Studies and Research on Women , and has continued to serve as its president. She has been an activist in Latin America and the world, introducing policies addressing breast cancer, HIV/AIDS, reproductive rights and gender reform in the UN.

#518

Susan Orr

#58001

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (65 years)

Susan Orr headed the United States Children's Bureau, a federal agency organized under the United States Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families, Administration for Children and Families, as Associate Commissioner.

#519

Margaret Hermann

#50080

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (87 years)

Margaret G. "Peg" Hermann is an American political psychologist who was the long-time director of the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

#520

Funmi Olonisakin

#71527

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (60 years)

Funmi Olonisakin is a British Nigerian scholar, who is a Professor of leadership, peace and conflict at King's College London, and an Extra-Ordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria. She is the founder and former Director of the African Leadership Centre founded on the principle of Pan-Africanism to build the next generation of leaders and scholars on the African continent with core transformational values. Olonisakin is the Programme Director of the ALC's Master of Science programmes on Leadership, peace and security. She is a research associate of Political Sciences at the Universi...

#521

Linda McClain

#62227

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (67 years)

Linda McClain is the Robert B. Kent Professor of Law at Boston University School of Law, and was previously the Rivkin Radler Distinguished Professor of Law at Hofstra Law School. McClain's work focuses on family law, sex equality, and feminist legal theory.McClain has written extensively on topics related to family, gender, and constitutional issues.

#522

Luiza Bialasiewicz

#87866

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (54 years)

Luiza Bialasiewicz is a political geographer and Professor of European Governance in the Department of European Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Before moving to Amsterdam in 2011, she was Senior Lecturer in the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, and prior to that, Lecturer in the Department of Geography at the University of Durham. Bialasiewicz obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Since 2013, Bialasiewicz has been Visiting Professor at the College of Europe, Natolin, where she teaches a course on European Geopolitics.

#523

Irma Sandoval

#82695

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (53 years)

Irma Eréndira Sandoval Ballesteros is a Mexican politician and scholar, expert in public administration and corruption control. In 2018 she was appointed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador as head of the Ministry of Public Administration. Prior to her designation, in 2016, she was elected member of Mexico's City Constituent Assembly, where she was vice-coordinator of Morena's parliamentary fraction and secretary of the Committee for Good Governance, Fight against Corruption and Responsibilities of Public Servants.

#524

Judith Kurland

#90151

Overall Influence

Judith Kurland was a Regional Director for the United States Department of Health and Human Services during the second Clinton administration. She was appointed by Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala in 1997.

#525

Sarah Song

#81364

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (52 years)

Sarah Song is professor of law and political science at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a political and legal theorist with a special interest in democratic theory and issues of citizenship, immigration, multiculturalism, gender, and race.

#526

Beatrice Halsaa

#92588

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (78 years)

Beatrice Halsaa is a Norwegian political scientist, gender studies expert and feminist. She was appointed as Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Oslo in 2003, the second person to hold a chair in that discipline at the University of Oslo. She was leader of the EU research project "Gendered Citizenship in Multicultural Europe: The Impact of Contemporary Women's Movements," which was a cooperation of 15 research institutions in ten countries. Her fields of expertise are gender equality, women's movements, feminist theory, and multiculturalism.

#527

Michele Wucker

#111274

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (56 years)

Michele M. Wucker /’wʊkər/ is an American author, commentator and policy analyst specializing in the world economy and crisis anticipation. She is the author of The Gray Rhino: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore, Lockout: Why America Keeps Getting Immigration Wrong when Our Prosperity Depends on Getting it Right and Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians and the Struggle for Hispaniola.

#528

Anneliese Dodds

#95931

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (47 years)

Anneliese Jane Dodds is a British Labour and Co-operative politician and public policy analyst serving as Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, and Chair of the Labour Party since 2021. She was Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer from April 2020 to May 2021, the first woman to hold the position. She has been Member of Parliament for Oxford East since 2017 and was a Member of the European Parliament for South East England from 2014 to 2017.

#529

Jana S. Rošker

#60664

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (65 years)

Jana S. Rošker is a Slovenian sinologist and professor at the Department of Asian Studies at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana. Biography Jana Rošker was born in 1960 in Murska Sobota. She was a student of sinology, journalism and pedagogy at the University of Vienna. She also studied at Beijing Foreign Studies University, Nankai University and Beijing University. She received her PhD at the University of Vienna in 1988 for the thesis 'Theories of the State and Anarchist Criticism of the State in China at the Turn of the Century' . During her studies and later in life she spe...

#530

Katrin Flikschuh

#81546

Overall Influence

Katrin A. Flikschuh FBA is professor of political theory at the London School of Economics . Flikschuh's research interests relate to the political philosophy of Immanuel Kant, metaphysics and meta-level justification in contemporary political philosophy, global justice and cosmopolitanism, and the history of modern political thought.

#531

Maya Harris

#50292

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (58 years)

Maya Lakshmi Harris is an American lawyer, public policy advocate, and writer. Harris was one of three senior policy advisors for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign's policy agenda and she also served as chair of the 2020 presidential campaign of her sister, Kamala Harris.

#532

Dagmar Schäfer

#44003

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (57 years)

Dagmar Schäfer is a German sinologist and historian of science. She is director of Department III, Artifacts, Action, Knowledge at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin. She is honorary professor for the history of technology, Technical University, Berlin; adjunct professor, Institute of Sinology, Freie Universität, Berlin, and Tianjin University . She was previously a guest professor at the school of history and culture of science, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. She was also the director of the Centre for Chinese Studies and held the professorial chair of Chinese studies...

#533

Juliet Hooker

#98391

Overall Influence

Juliet Hooker is a Nicaraguan-born political scientist who currently holds the Royce Family Professorship of Teaching Excellence in Political Science at Brown University. She is a political philosopher who focuses on racial justice, the theory of multiculturalism, and the political thought of the Americas.

#534

Brett Ashley Leeds

#119773

Overall Influence

Brett Ashley Leeds is an American political scientist. She is a professor of political science at Rice University, where she has also been the chair of the department. She studies how domestic politics affect international conflict and cooperation, as well as international institutions. She specializes in how alliances between countries function, and how they help countries prevent wars.

#535

Lynn Scarlett

#97193

Overall Influence

Patricia Lynn Scarlett is a US environmental policy executive and analyst. Until December 2021, she was the Chief External Affairs Officer at the Nature Conservancy. She is a frequent commentator on environmental issues. She was the Chief Operating Officer and Deputy Secretary of the Interior from 2005 to 2009, having previously served as the Assistant Secretary of Policy, Management and Budget from 2001 to 2005. Appointed by President George W. Bush, Scarlett was sworn in as Deputy Secretary of the Interior on November 22, 2005. In 2006 she served as acting Secretary of the Interior between the administrations of Gale Norton and Dirk Kempthorne.

#536

Margaret Wilson

#98459

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (78 years)

Margaret Anne Wilson is a New Zealand lawyer, academic and former Labour Party politician. She served as Attorney-General from 1999 to 2005 and Speaker of the House of Representatives from 2005 to 2008, during the Fifth Labour Government.

#537

Bethany Barratt

#126150

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (53 years)

Bethany Barratt is an American political scientist and author. She writes and researches about human rights and their effects on foreign policy. She is a professor of Political Science at Roosevelt University in Chicago, Illinois, and the director of its Joseph Loundy Human Rights Project, which engages undergraduates in comparative cross-national research on a variety of human rights challenges, especially as they occur in urban settings..

#538

Melissa R. Michelson

#73080

Overall Influence

Melissa R. Michelson is an American political scientist. She is a professor of political science at Menlo College, and in July 2020 she became the Dean of Arts and Sciences there. She studies voter mobilization and engagement in the United States, particularly among minority communities, as well as public opinion and political communication.

#539

Elena Korosteleva

Elena Korosteleva

#40675

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (53 years)

Elena Korosteleva is a dissident academic researcher and principal investigator focusing on governance, democratisation, complexity and resilience. She is Professor of Politics and Global Sustainable Development and Director of the Institute for Global Sustainable Development at the University of Warwick and is visiting professor at the Oxford Belarus Observatory at the Oxford University.

#540

Amy Mazur

#92387

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (63 years)

Amy Gale Mazur is an American political scientist and professor at Washington State University, as well as an associate researcher at the Centre d’Études Européennes at Sciences Po, Paris. Education Mazur attended University of Caen Normandy in 1982-1983 and attained her B.A. at Colby College in 1984. She completed graduate work at Sciences Po in 1986-1987. She obtained her M.A. in 1986 and in 1992 her Ph.D. in Politics and French Studies at New York University.

#541

Mariarosa Dalla Costa

Mariarosa Dalla Costa

#24955

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (82 years)

Mariarosa Dalla Costa is an Italian autonomist feminist and co-author of the classic The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community, with Selma James. This text launched the "domestic labour debate" by re-defining housework as reproductive labor necessary to the functioning of capital, rendered invisible by its removal from the wage-relation.

#542

Réjane Sénac

#78552

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (50 years)

Réjane Sénac is a French political scientist. She specialises in gender equality in recent French history and politics, as well as the politics of discrimination and diversity. She is the Director of Research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in the Centre de recherches politiques of Sciences Po. She was president of the parity commission of the French High Council for Equality between Women and Men , which was an independent national advisory body under the Prime Minister of France from January 2013 to January 2019.

#543

Jennifer Sterling-Folker

Jennifer Sterling-Folker

#71975

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (65 years)

Jennifer Sterling-Folker is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut. She was the Alan R. Bennett Honors Professor of Political Science. She is a specialist in International Relations theory.

#544

Jeanne Morefield

#135321

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (58 years)

Jeanne Morefield is associate professor of Political Theory and Fellow at New College, Oxford. She is also a Non-Residential Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Washington DC.

#545

Hoda Mahmoudi

#100067

Overall Influence

Hoda Mahmoudi is an American academic and scholar, specializing in religion and peace studies. Since July 2012, she has held the Baha'i Chair for World Peace at the University of Maryland. Biography According to Mahmoudi, she was born in Iran, and moved to Utah in the United States when she was ten years old. She attended the University of Utah, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in psychology and a Masters in Educational Psychology. She then completed a PhD in sociology, also at the University of Utah.

#546

Olena Parkhomchuk

#107248

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (59 years)

Olena Parkhomchuk is a Ukrainian political scientist. She is a professor in the Department of International Relations and Foreign Policy within the Institute of International Relations at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. Olena Parkhomchuk studies foreign policy and the historical development of international systems, process of disarmament and conversion. She is a laureate of the State Prize of Ukraine in Science and Technology.

#547

Homeira Moshirzadeh

#105312

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (63 years)

Homeira Moshirzadeh is an Iranian political scientist and associate professor in the Department of International Relations and an associate faculty at the Center for Women's Studies, at University of Tehran.

#548

Rosemary O'Leary

#114112

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (70 years)

Rosemary O'Leary is Emeritus Distinguished Professor at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University and Emeritus Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas. Her research focuses on public management, collaboration, conflict resolution, environmental and natural resources management, and public law.

#549

Valeria Sinclair-Chapman

#126191

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (56 years)

Valeria Sinclair-Chapman is an American political scientist, currently a professor of political science and African-American studies at Purdue University. Sinclair-Chapman studies American political institutions, the representation of minority groups in the United States Congress, and minority political participation, particularly how excluded groups come to be included in American politics.

#550

Claire Duncanson

#83256

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (51 years)

Claire Duncanson is a lecturer at the department of Social and Political Science; at the University of Edinburgh. Her research fields include Intersectional Security, International Relations theory and gender politics.

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