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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Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Political Science,

#651

Jennifer Curtin

#48067

Overall Influence

Jennifer Curtin is a New Zealand public policy academic, and a full professor at the University of Auckland. Academic career After a 1997 PhD titled 'Women in trade unions : strategies for the representation of women's interests in four countries' at the Australian National University, Curtin moved to the University of Auckland, rising to full professor. Curtin is a frequent political columnist in the New Zealand and international media.

#652

Nibal Thawabteh

Nibal Thawabteh

#122376

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (25 years)

Nibal Thawabteh is a Palestinian women's rights activist who works at Birzeit University. Life Thawabteh was the first woman to be elected to the Beit Fajjar Village Council, where she served for seven years. She developed her own training manual and volunteered to help other women get seats in the council. In 2005 she founded the monthly newspaper Al Hal , which addresses controversial issues including incest, polygamy, honor killings, illegal marriages, lesbianism and the plight of the poor. In 2008 she was the newspaper's editor-in-chief and a contributing writer. For the first issue of th...

#653

Rhonda M. Williams

#118125

Overall Influence

1957 - 2000 (43 years)

Rhonda Michèle Williams was an American professor, activist and political economist whose work combined economics with multiple other social fields including race and gender analysis, law, politics, public policy and cultural studies. She aimed to show how the examination of the roles of race and gender in economics benefitted from an inclusive approach rather than a separate and fragmented analysis in order to ensure that issues of economic inequality and discrimination were aptly addressed. Williams was also noted as being consistent in aligning her own ethics with economic analysis resulti...

#654

Patricia A. Weitsman

Patricia A. Weitsman

#123720

Overall Influence

1964 - 2014 (50 years)

Patricia Ann Weitsman was an American political scientist and international relations professor at Ohio University where she was also Director of War and Peace Studies. She specialized in security studies and international relations theory, especially on topics related to military alliances.

#655

Marie Breen Smyth

#37930

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (72 years)

Marie Breen Smyth is an author, teacher and researcher from Northern Ireland. She has published on topics such as the Northern Ireland conflict, particularly the human impact, trauma, victim politics, children and armed conflict, research ethics and methods, religion and conflict, and issues to do with political violence in Southern Africa, Israel/Palestine and Northern Ireland.

#656

Eleanor Antin

#30900

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (90 years)

Eleanor Antin is an American performance artist, film-maker, installation artist, conceptual artist, feminist artist, and university professor. Early life and education Eleanor Fineman was born in the Bronx on February 27, 1935. Her parents, Sol Fineman and Jeanette Efron, were Polish Jews who had recently immigrated to the United States. She had one sister, Marcia, born 1940.

#657

Christina Boswell

#150666

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (53 years)

Christina Anne Boswell is a political scholar. She is a Professor of Politics and Vice Principal for Research and Enterprise at the University of Edinburgh. Biography Boswell was born in London and attended the Sacred Heart High School in Hammersmith. She completed undergraduate studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Balliol College, Oxford and a MSc in Public Administration at the College of Europe. In 2001 she gained her PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics.

#658

Tali Mendelberg

#140848

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (62 years)

Tali Mendelberg is the John Work Garrett Professor in Politics at Princeton University, and winner of the American Political Science Association , 2002 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Book Award for her book, The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality.

#659

Kimberly Breier

#146949

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (53 years)

Kimberly Breier is an American diplomat, who served as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs from October 15, 2018 until her resignation on August 8, 2019. Early life Breier was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts. She completed a bachelor's degree in Spanish at Middlebury College and a master's degree in Latin American studies at the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University.

#660

Siobhan O'Sullivan

#76332

Overall Influence

1974 - 2023 (49 years)

Siobhan O'Sullivan was an Australian political scientist and political theorist. She was an associate professor in the School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales. Her research focused, among other things, on animal welfare policy and the welfare state. She was the author of Animals, Equality and Democracy and a coauthor of Getting Welfare to Work and Buying and Selling the Poor . She co-edited Contracting-out Welfare Services and The Political Turn in Animal Ethics . She was the founding host of the regular animal studies podcast Knowing Animals.

#661

Lea Ypi

#119941

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (46 years)

Lea Ypi is an Albanian author and academic. She is a professor of political theory at the London School of Economics. In 2022, she was named one of the world's top ten thinkers by the British magazine Prospect and one of the most important cultural figures by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Her work has been translated in 30 languages. She is a member of the jury of the Deutscher Memorial Prize.

#662

Carol Bacchi

#120658

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (77 years)

Carol Lee Bacchi is a Canadian-Australian political scientist. She is the Professor Emerita of Politics at the University of Adelaide. She was the first female lecturer appointed by the university in the Politics Department and the first woman to be granted tenure. She was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 2000.

#663

Nadia Brown

#154212

Overall Influence

#664

Bathsheba Nell Crocker

Bathsheba Nell Crocker

#119866

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (57 years)

Bathsheba "Sheba" Nell Crocker is an American diplomat who is currently serving as the Representative of the United States to the European Office of the United Nations. She previously served as Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs from 2014 to 2017.

#665

Rebecca Adler-Nissen

#158942

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (46 years)

Rebecca Adler-Nissen is a Danish political scientist specializing in international politics, particularly in European integration and the European Union, as well as the relationship between EU and its member states. She is a professor in the department of political science at the University of Copenhagen.

#666

Jane Green

#75665

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (51 years)

Jane Green is a British political scientist and academic. She is Professor of Political Science and British Politics at the University of Oxford and a professorial fellow of Nuffield College. She is a specialist in public opinion and electoral behaviour, and has co-directed the British Election Study.

#667

Mamie Locke

#143505

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (71 years)

Mamie Evelyn Locke is an American politician and educator. A Democrat, she was a member of the Hampton, Virginia city council 1996–2004, and mayor 2000–2004. Education Locke received a B.A. degree in history and political science from Tougaloo College in 1976. She then attended Atlanta University for advanced political science studies, receiving an M.A. in 1978 and a Ph.D. in 1984. She also completed a program in Middle Eastern studies at the American University in Cairo in 1986.

#668

Ingrid van Biezen

#162096

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (56 years)

Ingrid van Biezen is Professor of Comparative Politics at Leiden University, and the editor of the political science journal Acta Politica. Her research interests include comparative European politics, political parties and party systems in Europe, democratisation, Southern Europe, and post-communist politics.

#669

Adria Lawrence

#159010

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (52 years)

Adria K. Lawrence is an American political scientist and the Aronson Associate Professor of International Studies and Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. She is known for her expertise on colonialism, nationalism, conflict, collective action, and Middle Eastern and North African politics.

#670

Kristin Goss

#124857

Overall Influence

Kristin Anne Goss is an American political scientist. She is a Professor of Public Policy and Political Science in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. She specializes in the politics of gun control, advocacy by women's organizations, the formation of political movements, philanthropy and public policy, and civic engagement in the United States.

#671

Sonia Mazey

#171765

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (67 years)

Sonia Mazey is a New Zealand political science academic. She is currently a full professor at the University of Canterbury. Academic career After a PhD titled 'The theory and practice of the 1972 French regional reform 1972-1980, with special reference to Brittany : an example of incremental decision making' at the University of Oxford, she moved to the University of Canterbury, rising to full professor.

#672

Mary G. Dietz

#119039

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Mary Golden Dietz is the John Evans Emerita Professor of Political Theory at Northwestern University. She holds a joint appointment in Northwestern's Department of Political Science and its Gender and Sexuality Studies Program. She is the author of many books and articles in feminist theory and the history of philosophy and her work has been translated into French, Spanish, Czech, Turkish, and Japanese. She edited the journal Political Theory from 2005 to 2012. Prior to joining the faculty at Northwestern in 2007, she taught at the University of Minnesota. She announced her retirement in 202...

#673

Cristina Luca Boico

Cristina Luca Boico

#71871

Overall Influence

1916 - 2002 (86 years)

Cristina Luca Boico was a Romanian communist activist. After going into exile in France, she joined the French Resistance and worked in the intelligence service. At the end of the war, she returned to Romania and worked as the director of the Ministry of Education and numerous other governmental posts, until she was purged in 1952. Working as an editor for the Scientific Publishing House she later taught at the Politehnica University of Bucharest. In 1987, she left Romania to visit her children in Paris, refusing to return. For the remainder of her life, she gave lectures and published memoi...

#674

Beverly Blair Cook

#156148

Overall Influence

1927 - 2008 (81 years)

Beverly Blair Cook was an American professor and political scientist. She is best known for her work regarding judicial behavior, public opinion and judicial decisions, and the selection of female judges.

#675

Raia Prokhovnik

#118137

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

Raia Prokhovnik , is Reader in Politics at the Open University's Faculty of Social Sciences, for their Department of Politics and International Studies, and founding editor of the journal Contemporary Political Theory. She is the chair of the OU's interdisciplinary politics module, Living political ideas, and contributed to other modules including Power, dissent, equality: understanding contemporary politics.

#676

Maria João Rodrigues

#129852

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (70 years)

Maria João Rodrigues GOIH is a Portuguese academic and politician who served as Member of the European Parliament and Vice-President of the Group of the Socialists and Democrats from 2014 until 2019. Since 2017 she is also President of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies , succeeding Italian politician Massimo d'Alema.

#677

Shannon C. Stimson

#78943

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

Shannon C. Stimson is an American political theorist and historian of ideas, whose more recent work and teaching spans the economic and political thought of the early modern period through the nineteenth century. She is the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Chair in the Government department at Georgetown University. Her academic posts have included appointments at Harvard University , UC Berkeley , the Fulbright Professorship in the United Kingdom, the Christensen Fellowship of St. Catherine's College, Oxford, the John K. Castle Chair in Ethics, Politics and Economics at Yale University and she has been a Distinguished Academic Visitor at Queens' College, Cambridge on two occasions.

#678

Ursula Apitzsch

#126004

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (78 years)

Ursula Apitzsch is a German political scientist and sociologist. Since 1993, she has been Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the University of Frankfurt. Her research fields are cultural analysis, biographical research, migration, ethnicity and gender.

#679

Claire Robinson

#131608

Overall Influence

Claire Robinson is a New Zealand political communications academic. As of 2018, she is a full professor and Pro Vice-Chancellor at the Massey University. Academic career After a 2006 PhD titled 'Advertising and the market orientation of political parties contesting the 1999 and 2002 New Zealand general election campaigns' at the Massey University, Robinson joined the staff, rising to full professor.

#680

Nísia Trindade

#100367

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (67 years)

Nísia Trindade Lima is a Brazilian social scientist, sociologist, researcher and university professor who has been serving as Minister of Health of Brazil since 2023. She served as chairwoman of Oswaldo Cruz Foundation from 2017 to 2023.

#681

Shireen Lateef

#124093

Overall Influence

Shireen Rexina Lateef was a Fijian women's rights activist, known for her work on gender equality at the Asian Development Bank. Biography Shireen Lateef was born in Fiji and was of Indo-Fijian descent. After studying at St. Joseph's Secondary School in Fiji, she traveled to Australia to pursue higher education. She attended Monash University, graduating with a Ph.D. in social anthropology and education, which included significant fieldwork among Indo-Fijian women in the Fijian capital, Suva. She then spent nine years as a lecturer at the University of Melbourne.

#682

Kathi Lynn Austin

Kathi Lynn Austin

#175387

Overall Influence

Kathi Lynn Austin is an expert on arms trafficking, peace and security, and human rights. She has investigated the illegal trade in weapons, illicit trafficking operations, illegal resource exploitation and terrorism for over 20 years, and has documented conflicts in Africa, Latin America, East and Central Europe, and South Asia.

#683

Karin Bäckstrand

#126541

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (56 years)

Karin Bäckstrand is professor of political science at Stockholm University, Sweden, who has written extensively on climate and environmental governance and advises the ICSU Earth System Governance project. She is a member of the Swedish Climate Policy Council in Sweden.

#684

Jane Suiter

#65757

Overall Influence

Jane Suiter is an Irish political scientist, professor and director of Dublin City University's Institute for Future Media, Democracy, and Society and research lead of Ireland's Constitutional Convention and the Citizens' Assembly. She is the co-author or co-editor of three academic books and one guide book, and over 40 journal articles. In December 2020, she was named "Researcher of the Year" by the Irish Research Council and in February 2021, she was promoted to the position of professor by DCU.

#685

Vesla Weaver

#150870

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (46 years)

Vesla Mae Weaver is an American political scientist and author. She is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of political science and sociology at Johns Hopkins University. Early life and education Weaver was born in 1979. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Virginia before enrolling in Harvard University for her PhD.

#686

Emilie M. Hafner-Burton

#168550

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (52 years)

Emilie M. Hafner-Burton is a professor at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy and director of the School’s Laboratory on International Law and Regulation. She is the author of the book "Making Human Rights a Reality."

#687

Susan Close

#112204

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (58 years)

Susan Elizabeth Close is an Australian politician, who is currently the Deputy Premier of South Australia since March 2022. She also holds the ministerial portfolios of Minister for Climate, Environment and Water, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science and Minister for Defence and Space Industries while as Deputy Premier.

#688

Judith Goldstein

#172230

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (73 years)

Judith L. Goldstein is an American political scientist. She is the Janet M. Peck Professor of International Communication at Stanford University. She studies international political economy, with a particular focus on international trade policy.

#689

Emily Beausoleil

#158521

Overall Influence

Emily Beausoleil is a Canadian political theorist and lecturer of political science at the Victoria University of Wellington. She is the co-editor of the academic journal Democratic Theory along with Jean-Paul Gagnon.

#690

Aminata Diaw

#114002

Overall Influence

1959 - 2017 (58 years)

Aminata Diaw Cissé was a Senegalese lecturer and political philosopher who taught at the Cheikh Anta Diop University . Influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and her academia background, she wrote about citizenship, civil society, democracy, development, ethnicity, gender, globalisation, human rights, identity, nationality and the state in an African and Senegalese context by using a political insight. Diaw worked for the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa , Bellagio Study and Conference Center of the Rockfeller Foundation, National UNESCO Sub-Commission on Social S...

#691

Moira Gibb

#89048

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Dame Moira Margaret Gibb is a British public servant and social work adviser. After qualifying as a social worker, she worked for the London boroughs of Ealing, Kensington and Chelsea, and Camden, where she served as the chief executive of Camden London Borough Council from 2003 to 2011. Gibb served as a Civil Service commissioner from 2012 to 2016, and chaired the boards of City Lit and Skills for Care until 2022. She led a serious case review into safeguarding at Southbank International School, and into the Church of England's response to the case of Peter Ball.

#692

Ann Hunter Popkin

#149257

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (80 years)

Ann Hunter Popkin is a long-time social justice and women's movement activist. As a northern college student she traveled to Mississippi to participate in Freedom Summer in 1964. She was a founding member of Bread and Roses, a women's liberation organization in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1969, and produced the first scholarly study of its appeal and impact. A photographer, film-maker, teacher, and counselor, Popkin has worked in a variety of university and community settings.

#693

Amie Kreppel

#175652

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (57 years)

Amie Kreppel is an American political scientist and a Jean Monnet Chair , title awarded by the European Commission to top professors in the field of EU studies. She is currently Director of the Center for European Studies at the University of Florida, a federally funded comprehensive Title VI National Resource Center and a Jean Monnet Center of Excellence funded by the European Union. She was the President of the European Union Studies Association from 2011-2013 and served as co-editor of the peer-reviewed Italian Political Science Review published by Cambridge University Press. In 2016 Sh...

#694

Lise Morjé Howard

#131073

Overall Influence

Lise Morjé Howard is a political scientist from the United States , an expert on United Nations peacekeeping, war termination, civil wars, and American foreign policy. She is currently a Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georgetown University and President of the Academic Council on the United Nations System .

#695

Alma Adams

#95571

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (79 years)

Alma Shealey Adams is an American politician who represents North Carolina's 12th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives. A Democrat, Adams represented the state's 58th House district in Guilford County in the North Carolina General Assembly from her appointment in April 1994 until her election to Congress, succeeded by Ralph C. Johnson. A college administrator and art professor from Greensboro, Adams is known for her many distinctive hats . She won the 2014 special election in North Carolina's 12th congressional district to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Mel Watt, becoming the 100th woman serving in the 113th Congress.

#696

Ann Bostrom

#176687

Overall Influence

Ann Bostrom is an American policy analyst who is the Weyerhaeuser Endowed Professor in Environmental Policy at the University of Washington. Her research considers risk perception and management during uncertain times. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#697

Corine Mauch

#124733

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (65 years)

Corine Mauch is an American-born Swiss politician who currently serves as Mayor of Zurich since 2009. She previously served on the city council of Zürich between 1999 and 2008 for the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland . Mauch is the first female and first openly lesbian person to be elected mayor of the city.

#698

Cynthia P. Schneider

Cynthia P. Schneider

#127657

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (72 years)

Cynthia Perrin Schneider is an American diplomat and educator from Pennsylvania. She was the 61st United States Ambassador to the Netherlands from June 29, 1998 to June 17, 2001. She currently serves as a Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where she co-directs the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics with playwright and theater director Derek Goldman.

#699

Zillah Eisenstein

#93092

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (77 years)

Zillah R. Eisenstein is an American political theorist and gender studies scholar and Emerita Professor of the Department of Politics at Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York. Specializing in political and feminist theory; class, sex, and race politics; and construction of gender, Eisenstein is the author of twelve books and editor of the 1978 collection Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism, which published the Combahee River Collective statement.

#700

Wendy Rahn

#175619

Overall Influence

Wendy Rahn is an American political scientist. She is a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, researching social capital, partisanship and civic engagement in American democracy, and the role of emotions in political behavior.

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