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,

#601

Cathy Schneider

#111650

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (70 years)

Cathy Lisa Schneider is an American author and professor of urban politics, comparative social movements, and criminal justice. She is a professor at the American University School of International Service.

#602

Mirjam Kuenkler

#108113

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (48 years)

Mirjam Künkler, teaches Middle Eastern Politics at Princeton University. Kuenkler's expertise is in Iranian and Indonesian politics. Künkler has published widely on religion-state relations, law, party politics, social movements, and female Islamic authority in Iran and Indonesia. She is the principal-investigator of the "Iran Data Portal" funded by the Social Science Research Council , and the co-convener of the Oxford-Princeton research cluster on "Traditional authority and transnational religious networks in contemporary Shi‘ism.” She is a fellow of the “Women Creating Change” Project on G...

#603

Michelle Dion

#140355

Overall Influence

Michelle Dion is a political scientist, currently a professor in the department of political science and the Senator William McMaster Chair in Gender and Methodology at McMaster University, as well as the founding director of McMaster University's Centre for Research in Empirical Social Sciences. Dion studies the political economy of Latin America, the history of social welfare policies, political methodology, and comparative political behaviour with a focus on attitudes, gender, and sexuality in politics.

#604

Florence Gaub

#110249

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (48 years)

Florence Gaub is a Franco-German researcher, security expert and futurist who focuses on foresight based policy formation for international relations and security policy. She is director of the research division at the NATO Defense College . She worked as deputy director at the European Union Institute for Security Studies in Paris from February 2018 until May 2022, worked as foresight advisor at the General Secretariat of the Council and is Visiting Professor at the College of Europe, member of the WEF Global Future Council on the Future of Complex Risks as well as founder and president of ...

#605

Chrissie Mughogho

#56887

Overall Influence

Dr. Chrissie Chawanje-Mughogho is a Malawian former Ambassador of Malawi to India, Bangladesh, Angola, and Zambia She is a professor by training who rose up the education administration ranks at the University of Malawi. There she served as the first female dean of the faculty of Sciences at the University of Malawi.

#606

Ruth Kinna

#69026

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (64 years)

Ruth Ellen Kinna is a professor of political philosophy at Loughborough University, working in the Department of Politics, History and International Relations. Since 2007 she has been the editor of the journal Anarchist Studies.

#607

Susan Thomson

#111388

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (57 years)

Susan Michelle Thomson is a Canadian human rights lawyer and professor of peace and conflict studies at Colgate University. She worked in Rwanda for years in various capacities and is known for her books focusing on the post-genocide history of the country, which have received good reviews. Although she initially supported the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front , Thomson later reevaluated her position.

#608

Maia Panjikidze

Maia Panjikidze

#84953

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (65 years)

Maia Panjikidze is a Georgian diplomat and politician. Formerly a teacher of German, she joined the Georgian diplomatic service in 1994 and was appointed as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the cabinet of Bidzina Ivanishvili on October 25, 2012. She resigned November 5, 2014 in protest of Irakli Alasania being relieved of his position as Minister of Defense.

#609

Monica McWilliams

#105947

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (71 years)

Monica Mary McWilliams is a Northern Irish academic, peace activist, human rights defender and former politician in Northern Ireland. In 1996, she co-founded the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition political party and was elected as a delegate at the Multi-Party Peace Negotiations, which led to the Good Friday Peace Agreement in 1998.

#610

Kathleen Staudt

#138708

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (79 years)

Kathleen Staudt is a former professor of political science at the University of Texas at El Paso, where she held an endowed professorship for western hemispheric trade policy studies. Her courses focused on topics such as public policy, borders, democracy, leadership and civic engagement, and women and politics. After retiring on September 1, 2017, she became Professor Emerita.

#611

Elizabeth Zechmeister

#138641

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (53 years)

Elizabeth Jean Zechmeister is an American political scientist and Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University, noted for her research on comparative political behavior, public opinion, Latin American politics, and terrorism studies.

#612

Pamela Conover

#139182

Overall Influence

Pamela Johnston Conover is an American political scientist. In 2007 she was named the Burton Craige Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She studies political behavior and political psychology, with particular focuses on women and politics as well as political media studies.

#613

L. H. M. Ling

#140449

Overall Influence

1955 - 2018 (63 years)

L. H. M. "Lily" Ling was a political theorist and scholar whose work focused around the theory of worldism within international relations. Much of her work draws from storytelling, the arts, and non-Western culture to present alternative versions of historical analysis of global affairs. She was Professor of International Affairs at The New School at the time of her death.

#614

Karen Stenner

#88459

Overall Influence

Karen Stenner is a political scientist specializing in political psychology. Stenner has studied the political activation of authoritarian personality types, and how that activation explains the contemporary success of some authoritarian political figures as well as enduring conflicts between some individuals and the broad tolerance that characterizes liberal democracy.

#615

Wendy J. Schiller

#132250

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (61 years)

Wendy J. Schiller is the Royce Family Professor of Teaching Excellence in Political Science at Brown University. She is a Faculty Fellow at Brown's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, where she also serves as Director of the A. Alfred Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy.

#616

Irene Natividad

#122141

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (77 years)

Irene Natividad is an American feminist, women's rights activist, corporate director, international advocate for women in leadership positions, President of the GlobeWomen Research and Education Institute, a non-profit organization based in Washington, DC whose lead programs include the annual Global Summit of Women and Corporate Women Directors International . She previously served as Chair of the National Women's Political Caucus, Chair of the National Commission on Working Women, Executive Director of the Philippine American Foundation, Founder and President of Asian American Professional...

#617

Melissa Lane

#52608

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (59 years)

Melissa Lane is a full professor of politics at Princeton University, a position she has held since 2009. Prior to this, she was a Senior Research Fellow of King's College, Cambridge and Associate Director of their Centre for History and Economics. She was a lecturer at Cambridge from 1994 to 2009. Her expertise is in political theory.

#618

Susan Poser

#56054

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (62 years)

Susan Poser is the current and first female president of Hofstra University, having succeeded retiring president Stuart Rabinowitz on August 1, 2021. Before being named to the Hofstra post, she was chief operating officer, provost, and vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

#619

Cécile Laborde

#125668

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (54 years)

Cécile Laborde is a professor of political theory at the University of Oxford. Since 2017, she has held the Nuffield Chair of Political Theory and in 2013 she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. Her research focusses on republicanism, liberalism and religion, theories of law and the state, and global justice. Her most recent book, Liberalism's Religion, was published by Harvard University Press in 2017.

#620

Mary Patterson McPherson

#42755

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (95 years)

Mary Patterson McPherson has served as the president of Bryn Mawr College , the vice president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation , and the executive officer of the American Philosophical Society . She is considered to be "a significant figure in American higher education and a leader in the education of women".

#621

Dorothy Pickles

#88275

Overall Influence

1903 - 1994 (91 years)

Dorothy Maud Pickles was a British university teacher, historian, and broadcaster. Early life and education Dorothy Maud Salmon was born in Bridlington, East Riding of Yorkshire on 8 August 1903; the eldest child of a hatmaker and physical education teacher. A scholarship enabled her to enter University of Leeds from where she received a first-class Bachelor of Arts degree in French . After obtaining another scholarship, Salmon went to the Sorbonne to pursue her Master's degree .

#622

Elaheh Koulaei

#100713

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (69 years)

Elaheh Koulaei is an Iranian political scientist, reformist intellectual. Dr Koulaei is a professor of political science at Tehran University, and a member of the Islamic Iran Participation Front. She was one of the 513 women candidates for election to the Iranian parliament, and was a member of the sixth parliament of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

#623

Renee Cramer

#108026

Overall Influence

Renee Ann Cramer is an American law and society scholar. She is a professor and chair of the Law, Politics, and Society program at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. In an email to alumni on April 13, 2023, Cramer was announced as the new Provost of Dickinson College, starting July 1, 2023.

#624

Rachel M. Werner

#133109

Overall Influence

Rachel Michele Werner is an American physician-economist. She is the first woman and first physician-economist executive director of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. In 2018, Werner was elected a Member of the National Academy of Medicine for her investigation into the unintended consequences of quality improvement incentives.

#625

Robyn Rodriguez

Robyn Rodriguez

#41612

Overall Influence

Robyn Magalit Rodriguez is an Filipina American professor, author, and activist. She is currently a professor and chair of the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Davis. In 2018, Rodriguez founded the Bulosan Center for Filipino Studies; which is noted to be the first Filipino Studies center in the United States. She is a former associate professor at Rutgers.

#626

Ozlem Ayduk

#54117

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (56 years)

Ozlem Nefise Ayduk is an American social psychologist at U.C. Berkeley researching close relationships, emotion regulation, and the development of self-regulation in children. She is a fellow at the Society of Experimental Social Psychology and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. She has contributed content to several psychology handbooks, dictionaries, and encyclopedias.

#627

Hasna Begum

#77877

Overall Influence

1935 - 2020 (85 years)

Hasna Begum was a Bangladeshi philosopher and feminist, and a professor of philosophy at the University of Dhaka until her retirement in December 2000. Education and career She earned her BA and MA from the University of Dhaka and her PhD in moral philosophy from Monash University, where she was the first doctoral advisee of Australian philosopher Peter Singer. The title of her doctoral dissertation was Moore’s Ethics: Theory and Practice. Begum was a prolific author, and translated a number of philosophical classics into Bengali.

#628

Elizabeth Glidden

#118587

Overall Influence

Elizabeth Glidden is a lawyer, public policy professional, adjunct faculty at Humphrey School of Public Affairs in Minnesota, and former member of the Minneapolis City Council. She is the Director of Public Policy and Strategic Initiatives for the Minnesota Housing Partnership, "working on housing policy at the federal, state, and local levels."

#629

Hannah Cotton

#47487

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (79 years)

Hannah M. Cotton-Paltiel is the Shalom Horowitz Professor of Classics in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She was head of its classics department until 2005. She is a classical texts researcher, and former editor of Scripta Classica Israelica. She teaches Latin language and Roman history. She is married to Ari Paltiel.

#630

Camille Froidevaux-Metterie

#101738

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (57 years)

Camille Froidevaux-Metterie is a French philosopher, researcher and professor of political science. Her work focuses on the transformations of the female condition in the contemporary era, in a phenomenological perspective that places the question of the body at the center of the reflection. Her work also focuses on women's reappropriation of their bodies as expressed in recent feminist movements dealing with issues related to intimacy and female genitality . In 2017, she was awarded the Chevalier de l'ordre national du Mérite.

#631

Emma Brossard

#114587

Overall Influence

1928 - 2007 (79 years)

Emma Beatriz Brossard was an American professor of politics and government at the Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge and noted expert on the Venezuelan oil industry. She authored four monographs on the Venezuelan oil industry and its history. She was known for her criticisms of the Hugo Chavez administration and its policies in governing the Venezuelan oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, Sociedad Anónima .

#632

Rose Ghorayeb

#91968

Overall Influence

1909 - 2006 (97 years)

Rose Ghorayeb was a Lebanese writer, author, literary critic, and feminist. She was a professor of Arabic literature at the Lebanese American University and was frequently referred to as the "first female critic in Arabic literature". Regarded as a pioneer in aesthetic criticism, her literary career spanned more than 70 years and included many children stories, articles, biographies and plays.

#633

Bronwyn Hayward

Bronwyn Hayward

#91829

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Bronwyn Mary Hayward is a New Zealand political scientist. Her areas of research are democracy, sustainability and young people. She was a lead author on a United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report.

#634

Sarah Kreps

#106768

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (49 years)

Dr. Sarah E. Kreps is an American political scientist, United States Air Force veteran, and policy analyst who focuses on U.S. foreign and defense policy. She is a professor of government at Cornell University, adjunct professor of law at Cornell Law School, and an adjunct scholar at West Point's Modern War Institute.

#635

Carolyn Bourdeaux

#123294

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (55 years)

Carolyn Jordan Bourdeaux is an American educator and politician who served as the U.S. representative from Georgia's 7th congressional district from 2021 to 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, she was a professor at the Andrew Young School of Public Policy at Georgia State University from 2003 to 2021.

#636

Anita Anand

#112271

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (58 years)

Anita Indira Anand is a Canadian lawyer and politician who has served as the president of the Treasury Board since 2023. She has represented the riding of Oakville in the House of Commons since the 2019 federal election, sitting as a member of the Liberal Party.

#637

Yvonne Galligan

Yvonne Galligan

#123569

Overall Influence

Yvonne Galligan OBE is an Irish political scientist and consultant who is currently teaching at Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Trinity College Dublin.

#638

Jessica Rawson

#33172

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (82 years)

Dame Jessica Mary Rawson, is an English art historian, curator and sinologist. She is also an academic administrator, specialising in Chinese art. After many years at the British Museum, she was Warden of Merton College, Oxford, from 1994 until her retirement in 2010. She served as pro-vice-chancellor at University of Oxford from 2006 for a term of five years.

#639

Diane Lamoureux

Diane Lamoureux

#85050

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (71 years)

Diane Lamoureux is a Canadian professor, essayist, and writer. She serves as Professor of Sociology in the Political Science Department of Laval University in Quebec. Her research focuses on the intersection of politics, sociology, and feminism.

#640

Yasmin Fahimi

#94973

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (58 years)

Yasmin Fahimi is a German trade unionist and politician who has been chairing the German Trade Union Confederation since 2022. From 2017 to 2022, Fahimi served as a member of the German Bundestag. From January 2014 to December 2015 she was the general secretary of the Social Democratic Party .

#641

Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh

Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh

#99214

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (60 years)

Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh is an Iranian-American researcher, university lecturer, and United Nations consultant in peacebuilding, conflict resolution, counter-terrorism, and radicalization, best known for her work in "Human Security" and for contributions in the republics of Central Asia and Afghanistan, as cited by the New York Times and other publications as well as hundreds of scholarly publications. Currently, she is a lecturer at Sciences Po, researcher, and consultant to the United Nations.

#642

Lorraine Minnite

#158144

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (25 years)

Lorraine Carol Minnite is a professor of political science, as well as an associate professor of public policy, at Rutgers University-Camden. Education Minnite received her bachelor's degree in history from Boston University, and her masters' and PhD degrees in political science from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

#643

Nina Kasniunas

#69919

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (53 years)

Nina Therese Kasniunas is an American political scientist and writer. She is the Arsht Professor in Ethics and Leadership in the Center for People, Politics, & Markets at Goucher College. Early life and education Kasniunas was born in 1972. She earned a bachelor's degree from Indiana University Bloomington in 1995. She completed a master's degree in 2002 at Loyola University Chicago where she earned a doctorate in political science in 2009. She completed her dissertation titled Impact of Interest Group Testimony on Lawmaking in Congress under doctoral advisor Raymond Tatlovich.

#644

Erika Weinthal

#92915

Overall Influence

Erika Weinthal is an American environmental policy scholar currently the Lee Hill Snowdon Professor of Environmental Policy at Duke University. Her current research is environmentalism and its legal politics.

#645

Abigail Bakan

#95633

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (71 years)

Abigail "Abbie" B. Bakan is a Canadian academic. Academic career Bakan was chair of the Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto from 2013 to 2018 and after the end of her term remains a professor in the department. Her research focuses on employment equity, Marxist theory and "anti-oppression politics".

#646

Monika Motsch

#129248

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (83 years)

Monika Motsch is a German sinologist who works as a professor at the University of Bonn and University of Erlangen–Nuremberg. Biography Monika Motsch was born in Germany in 1942. In 1971, she earned her doctor's degree in Sinology from Heidelberg University. From 1973 to 2004, she successively worked as lecturer and professor at the University of Bonn. She was director of the Department of Sinology of the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg in 1998, and held that office until 2000. From 2012 to 2014, she was a foreign specialist of Tsinghua University. During that time, she worked with her husba...

#647

Julie Mostov

#171467

Overall Influence

Julie Mostov is an American political scientist, academic administrator and consultant. She is the dean of NYU Liberal Studies. Early life Mostov graduated from Mount Holyoke College. She earned a master's degree from the University of Belgrade and a PhD from New York University.

#648

Janine Hayward

#160705

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (56 years)

Janine Alyth Deaker Hayward is a New Zealand politics academic. She is currently a full professor at the University of Otago. Hayward is the granddaughter of John Waddell Hayward who was Registrar of the University of Otago from 1948 to 1974.

#649

Frances W. Herring

#148398

Overall Influence

1902 - 1993 (91 years)

Frances W. Herring was a Professor of Government at University of California, Berkeley. She was the leader of the Women Strike for Peace in 1961 and a signatory on The Triple Revolution. Career Herring was a Professor of Government at the University of California, Berkeley. She wrote about housing, employment and development in America. In 1948 she formed the Washington Committee for Academic Freedom records. Herring wrote about the development and control of nuclear industry in California.

#650

Amy Erica Smith

#126948

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (49 years)

Amy Erica Smith is an American political scientist. Education and academic career Smith was born in Eugene, Oregon, and raised in Dallas, Texas. She earned a bachelor's degree in Latin American studies at the University of Texas at Austin, obtained a master's degree in city and regional planning at Cornell University, then pursued doctoral studies in political science at the University of Pittsburgh. Smith moved to Ames, Iowa, in 2012, and began teaching at Iowa State University as an assistant professor of political science. In 2018, she became an associate professor. Since 2019, Smith has s...

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