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,

#751

Ndella Paye

#164844

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Ndella Paye Diouf is a militant French Afro-feminist and Muslim theologian who was born in Senegal. She has fought against the requirement for young Muslim women to wear the hijab in French schools but has above all sought full equality between the races and between men and women. She has been particularly intent on ensuring a successful future for her three daughters, giving them self-confidence through a good education and convincing them that black skin and afro hair are features of beauty.

#752

Lynette Mitchell

#84071

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Professor Lynette Gail Mitchell is Professor in Greek History and Politics at the University of Exeter. Mitchell is known for her work on ancient Greek politics and kingship. Career Mitchell obtained her BA at the University of New England and then moved to the UK on a Commonwealth Scholarship in 1991. Mitchell completed her PhD at the University of Durham in 1994 and published her thesis as Greeks Bearing Gifts: the public use of private relationships 435-323 BC in 1997. Mitchell held a British Academy Post-doctoral Fellowship and Junior Research Fellowship at Oriel College, Oxford.

#753

Lauren Davenport

#181948

Overall Influence

Lauren Davenport is an American political scientist. She is Associate Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. Her research focuses on American politics with a particular focus on race and ethnicity.

#754

Alison Dagnes

#181363

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Alison Dawn Dagnes is an American professor, author, and commentator on American politics. Her work focuses on politics and the media, politics and humor, and political scandal. She is a Professor of Political Science at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania.

#755

Caroline Thomas

#170273

Overall Influence

1959 - 2008 (49 years)

Caroline Thomas was an international relations academic and a leading authority on the politics of development. Her work In Search of Security was an early contribution to the 'widening' debate within security studies.

#756

Olivia Milburn

#85843

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Olivia Milburn is a sinologist, author and literary translator who specialises in Chinese cultural history and in Chinese minority groups. Life and career Milburn is a professor at the School of Chinese, Hong Kong University.

#757

Ene Ergma

#109703

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Ene Ergma is an Estonian politician, a member of the Riigikogu , and scientist. She was a member of the political party Union of Pro Patria and Res Publica and, before the two parties merged, a member of Res Publica Party. On 1 June 2016, Ergma announced her resignation from the party, because the party had lost its identity and turned populist.

#758

Fiammetta Venner

#174004

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Fiammetta Venner is a French political scientist, a writer and an editor. She is director of the Prochoix journal and Ikhwan Info. She wrote in Charlie Hebdo from 1995 to 2009, then again after the terrorist attack of January 2015. Since 2007, she directs a series of documentary called 100 muslim women speak for themselves

#759

Abby Marlatt

#153230

Overall Influence

1916 - 2010 (94 years)

Abby Lindsey Marlatt, Ph.D. was a social justice activist and a teacher scholar committed to civic engagement. While a professor at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky, she became the center of controversy at UK in the mid-1960s over anti-war protests and whether the university could censor her in her role as a public intellectual. She was honored for her work by many academic, professional and community organizations including the National Conference for Community and Justice, and she was inducted into the Kentucky Civil Rights Hall of Fame in 2001.

#760

Deborah Brennan

#178125

Overall Influence

Deborah Jane Brennan is an Australian Professor in social policy research, who was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia, in the Queens Birthday Honours list, in 2022, for her significant service to social policy research, gender equity and tertiary education.

#761

Birgit Krawietz

#119183

Overall Influence

Birgit Krawietz is professor of Islamic Studies at the Institut für Islamwissenschaft at the Freie Universität Berlin. Biography Birgit Krawietz is professor of Islamic Studies. She earned her PhD in Islamic Studies from the University of Freiburg in 1990. From 1992 to 1998 she worked as a post-doctoral assistant at the Orientalische Seminar at the University of Tübingen. After having finished her habilitation with Professor Joseph van Ess at the Orientalische Seminar of the Universität Tübingen about "Hierarchie der Rechtsquellen im tradierten sunnitischen Islam" she left for the United States to join the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey as a fellow.

#762

Aliza Lavie

#106536

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Aliza Lavie is an Israeli academic and politician. She served as a member of the Knesset for Yesh Atid between 2013 and 2019, and is a senior lecturer at the School of Communication at Bar-Ilan University. She is also an author, publicist, media personality, and social activist. Her work focuses on gender issues and multiculturalism in Judaism and Israeli society.

#763

Tracy B. Strong

#170669

Overall Influence

1943 - 2022 (79 years)

Tracy Burr Strong was a philosopher and political theorist. His first book, Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration was recognised as a valuable contribution to scholarship on the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It repositioned Nietzsche's project as political against the assumption that Nietzsche's philosophy was apolitical.

#764

Laura Nuño Gómez

Laura Nuño Gómez

#112742

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Laura Nuño Gómez is a Spanish political scientist, researcher, and feminist activist. She is director of the Gender Studies Chair of the Institute of Public Law and the Gender Equality Observatory at King Juan Carlos University , as well as the creator of the first academic degree in Gender Studies in Spain, and of various postgraduate programs in this subject. She is the author of El mito del varón sustentador , as well as about 30 articles and books about her research. Since the enactment of the , she has been one of the three expert members of the State Council for the Participation of Wom...

#765

Susan L. Ziadeh

#137712

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Susan L. Ziadeh is a member of the Middle East Institute’s Board of Governors who served as the U.S. Ambassador to Qatar from 2011 to 2014. Her rank was as a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, class of Minister-Counselor.

#766

Magdalena Śniadecka-Kotarska

#88455

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Magdalena Śniadecka-Kotarska is the Polish Ambassador to Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador. She is an ethnologist/anthropologist of culture and politics, the first Polish Latin Americanist, conducting field research in Andean America devoted to ethnopolitics, native populations and gender identity.

#767

Mary O'Brien

#59861

Overall Influence

1926 - 1998 (72 years)

Mary Mamie O'Brien was a feminist philosopher and professor. She taught sociology and feminist social theory in Canada until her death. She was a founding member of the Feminist Party of Canada. Life Mary Mamie O'Brien was born on 8 July 1926 in Walmer, Kent. Unable to take care of her children, her mother took Mary and her brother to Glasgow at the age of four, where they were raised by three aunts. According to The Women's Review of Books obituary, "Mary always said she was English by birth, Irish by name and Scottish by choice; later, she became a Canadian by choice."

#768

Jelena Džankić

#187164

Overall Influence

Jelena Džankić is Co-Director of the Global Citizenship Observatory and part-time professor at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy. Career Džankić studied Political Science/International Relations and European Studies at the American University in Bulgaria. She received her PhD in International Studies from the University of Cambridge where she focused on nationalism in the new states in the Western Balkans. Džankić researches the wealth-based acquisition of citizenship, state and nation building, and Europeanisation. She is a part-time professor at the European University Inst...

#769

Kathie Stromile Golden

#185622

Overall Influence

Kathie Stromile Golden is an American political scientist. She is the Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at Mississippi Valley State University, where she is also a Professor of Rural Public Policy. She specializes in the politics of communist and post-communist societies.

#770

Mary Moore

#124147

Overall Influence

1930 - 2017 (87 years)

Georgina Mary Moore was a British author, diplomat and administrator, the principal of St Hilda's College, Oxford, from 1980 to 1990. She published several novels, radio and television plays under the pen name Helena Osborne.

#771

Camille Agnes Becker Paul

#171982

Overall Influence

1932 - 2010 (78 years)

Camille Agnes Becker Paul was an Australian feminist, moral theologian and activist. Early life Camille Agnes Becker was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1932. Her father, Norman Becker, was an engineer who worked on the New South Wales railroad, and her mother, Elsie Childs, was a dressmaker. She was raised in a Catholic family and attended Catholic school for primary education. and later studied to be a secretary, and a physical education trainer. She married Ken Paul in 1956, and had six children with him. Tragically, one of their children, a son, died by drowning in 1972, and one daughter was stillborn.

#772

Asha Rao

#74824

Overall Influence

Asha Rao is a mathematician and expert in cyber security. She is the Associate Dean, or Head of Department, of Mathematical Sciences and Professor at RMIT University. Education and career Rao completed her PhD in Algebra at the University of Pune. She started working at RMIT University as a lecturer in 1992, and became a Professor in 2016.

#773

Roma Guy

#78864

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Roma Guy is an American LGBT- and women's-rights activist. She was born in Maine and earned a Masters in Social Work from the University of Maine, after which she worked in Africa for nine years. She is openly lesbian.

#774

S. Sara Monoson

#175988

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

S. Sara Monoson is Professor of Political Science, Classics and Philosophy at Northwestern University. She specialises in the history of political theory, politics in ancient Greece, and classical receptions.

#775

Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone

#187811

Overall Influence

1927 - 2017 (90 years)

Teresa Jadwiga Rakowska-Harmstone was a Polish-Canadian political scientist. She was an expert in the politics of Eastern Europe, Soviet Studies, and post-Soviet Studies. Rakowska-Harmstone was a professor at Carleton University from 1966 until her death, where she helped establish the Institute of Soviet and East European Studies and was head of the Department of Political Science. She was also a professor at Collegium Civitas from its founding, and served a term as the head of the Department of International Relations there.

#776

Eileen Cheng-yin Chow

#116764

Overall Influence

Eileen Chengyin Chow is a sinologist, Chinese translator and University Teacher. She works for the Duke University and for the Shih Hsin University in Taipei, Taiwan. She graduated in Literature from Harvard University and studied her Ph.D in Comparative Literature at Stanford University. Together with Carlos Rojas, in 2009 she translated to English Brothers, the longest novel written by the Chinese novelist Yu Hua. The novel was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize and was awarded France's Prix Courrier International in 2008.

#777

Valerie Bryson

#183897

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Valerie Bryson is a British political scientist, who has published extensively on feminist theory and politics. She was appointed professor of politics at the University of Huddersfield in 2002, and is founder of the Centre for Democracy and Governance in 2006, serving as its director until 2008. Since 2010, she has been professor emerita.

#778

Joanna R. Quinn

#186387

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Joanna R. Quinn is a Canadian political scientist. She is a Professor of political science and director of the Centre for Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Reconstruction at the University of Western Ontario.

#779

Janie Leatherman

#188077

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Janie L. Leatherman is an international relations scholar from the United States. She is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at Fairfield University. Her publications encompass conflict early warning and prevention, conflict transformation, and peace building, which work is cited in the development of the international principle and doctrine on the Responsibility to Protect. In addition, her scholarship has contributed to the normative understanding of peace building, and the exercise of discipline and punitive power in international affairs, including in the global politica...

#780

Marie Tulip

#149730

Overall Influence

1935 - 2015 (80 years)

Marie Tulip was an Australian feminist writer, academic and proponent for the ordination of women as priests. Early and family life Born Marie Grant in Mackay, Queensland to parents Robert and Elspeth Grant, Tulip attended a Presbyterian church as a child. Tulip attended boarding school in Brisbane and later, having received a scholarship, attended the University of Queensland where she studied Arts and achieved an Honours degree in French. As an undergraduate, she participated in Australian Student Christian Movement gatherings with, among others, James Tulip . They married in Chicago in 1957.

#781

Anna Sroka

#154461

Overall Influence

Anna Marta Sroka is a Polish political scientist, who serves as Poland Ambassador to Spain . Life Anna Sroka has graduated from Political Science at the University of Wrocław . She studied also in Berlin and on the Autonomous University of Madrid. In 2006, she defended a Ph.D. thesis on the model of autonomy in Spain. In 2015, she received habilitation degree at the University of Warsaw. She specializes on quality of democracy.

#782

Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg

#158229

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg is an Executive in Residence at Schmidt Futures. Before that she was Director of African Women in Agricultural Research and Development . Wanjiru is also the Founder and past Executive Director of Akili Dada, a leadership incubator for African girls and young women and a former Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco.

#783

Susan Tolchin

#181538

Overall Influence

1941 - 2016 (75 years)

Susan Jane Tolchin was an American political scientist. Life Susan Jane Goldsmith was born in Manhattan to Jacob Goldsmith, a lawyer, and his wife Dorothy , a teacher. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College, the University of Chicago and New York University. She taught at Mount Vernon College, at The George Washington University during the early 1990s, and George Mason University.

#784

Constance Horner

#180495

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Constance Joan Horner is an American businesswoman, known for being the third Director of the United States Office of Personnel Management as well as President Reagan's chief advisor on Federal civil service personnel matters. She was a presidential appointee in the Administrations of President Reagan and President George H. W. Bush.

#785

Maria José Rodriguez-Salgado

#157616

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Maria José Rodriguez-Salgado is professor of international history at the London School of Economics. Rodriguez-Salgado is a specialist in 16th and 17th century Europe, Elizabeth Tudor, Philip II, Charles V, and Anglo-Spanish relations. With the staff of the National Maritime Museum she curated and wrote the guide to their exhibition Armada.

#786

Snejina Gogova

#79479

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Snejina Gogova is Bulgarian Sinologist, sociolinguist, and psycholinguist, and Professor of Chinese Linguistics at the Faculty of Classical and Modern Philologies of Sofia University. Gogova published in English and Chinese between 1985 and 2001 and in Russian and Bulgarian from 1970 to 2009.

#787

O Sonfa

#113645

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

#788

Rosie Campbell

#178248

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Rosie Campbell is professor of politics at King's College, University of London. Previously she was a professor at UCL and Birkbeck College. She is a specialist in public expectations of politicians and voting behaviour. In 2018, she was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

#789

Lucia Nader

#186942

Overall Influence

Lucia Nader is a Brazilian social entrepreneur and human rights activist. She is currently a fellow with the Open Society Foundations, investigating how professional civil society organizations are dealing with trends of contemporary societies - a project called Solid Organizations in a Liquid World. She was, until December 2014, Executive Director of Conectas Human Rights. She holds a postgraduate degree in Development and International Organizations from the Paris Institute of Political Studies and a bachelor's degree in international relations from the Catholic University of São Paulo .

#790

Elizabeth Theiss-Morse

#188064

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Elizabeth Theiss-Morse is an American political scientist. She is the Willa Cather Professor of Political Science at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, where she has also served as the Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. She studies political psychology, with a particular focus on group identity, the role of emotions in politics, and public opinion in the United States.

#791

Fatemeh Shayan

#49102

Overall Influence

Fatemeh Shayan is an Iranian political scientist and assistant professor at the University of Isfahan. Her book titled Security in the Persian Gulf Region won the Farabi International Award. Career Shayan is an assistant professor at the University of Isfahan, Iran. Earlier, she was a post-doctoral scholar at University of Tampere , Finland. She completed her doctoral study, along with many academic publications in international journals, in the Faculty of Management at UTA, and defended her dissertation in December 2014. She was also a researcher at UTA during 2013–2014. Her latest book, Security in the Persian Gulf Region, was published by Palgrave McMillan.

#792

Berenice A. Carroll

#157313

Overall Influence

1932 - 2018 (86 years)

Berenice Anita Carroll was an American political scientist and activist specialized in peace and conflict studies, feminist theory, and women's studies. Carroll led the creation of the women's studies program at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and served as director of the Purdue University women's studies program. She initiated the establishment of the Coordinating Committee on Women in the Historical Profession in 1969.

#793

Maria Otero

#187910

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Maria Otero was the first holder of the office of the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights from January 15, 2012, through February 4, 2013. She also served as the President's Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues.

#794

Wen-chin Ouyang

#100579

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Wen-chin Ouyang, is a professor of Arabic literature and comparative literature at SOAS, University of London. Early life and education Ouyang was born in Taiwan and raised in Libya. She earned her bachelor's degree in the Arabic language from the University of Tripoli and completed her PhD in Middle Eastern studies at Columbia University in the United States. She taught Arabic studies at Columbia, the University of Chicago, and the University of Virginia before moving to the United Kingdom. Ouyang speaks both Arabic and Mandarin Chinese as a native speaker.

#795

Susan M. Elliott

#76875

Overall Influence

Susan M. Elliott is an American diplomat currently serving as president and CEO of The National Committee on American Foreign Policy . Elliott is a retired Foreign Service Officer who was the U.S. Ambassador to Tajikistan from 2012 to 2015.

#796

Katarzyna Pisarska

#189240

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Katarzyna Emanuela Pisarska is a Polish social entrepreneur, civic activist and academic, specializing in diplomacy and foreign policy. She is the founder and chairwoman of the European Academy of Diplomacy in Warsaw, Poland and the Visegrad School of Political Studies run in cooperation with the Council of Europe. She is the co-founder and chairwomen of the Casimir Pulaski Foundation and the Warsaw security forum and an associate professor at the Warsaw School of Economics. Since 2020 she is the vice-president of European Forum Alpbach in Austria.

#797

Marcela Del Río Reyes

#172255

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Marcela Yolanda Del Río y Reyes is an intellectual, professor, journalist, diplomat and writer. Her works cover national and global issues. Early life Del Río Reyes was born in Coyoacán, Mexico City and grew up in a family of writers. Her mother, María Aurelia Reyes de del Río, was a writer, journalist and painter. Her father, Manuel del Río Govea, was a lawyer, historian and was a former child actor. Her brother, Carlos Pacheco Reyes, was a philosopher, journalist and psychiatrist. She learned to paint and inherited her liking for literature and classical music from her mother. Her interest ...

#798

Cheryl Glenn

#112098

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Cheryl Glenn is a scholar and teacher of rhetoric and writing. She is currently Distinguished Professor of English and Women’s Studies Director at Pennsylvania State University. Glenn earned her B.S., M.A., and PhD. from Ohio State University. Prior to beginning work at Pennsylvania State University in 1997, Glenn taught at Oregon State University established the Center for Teaching Excellence. In the summers, she teaches rhetoric and writing at the Bread Loaf School of English, an intensive six-week graduate school for secondary-school teachers, and has served as the on-site director of ...

#799

Jane Bennett

#188129

Overall Influence

In 2004, Jane Bennett co-edited Jacketed Women: Qualitative Research Methodologies on Sexualities and Gender in Africa with Charmaine Pereira. Bennett has a BA from the University of Natal, MPhil and EdD from Columbia University. She has an academic background in linguistics, literature, sociology, and feminist theory.

#800

Madeleine Sumption

#118726

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Madeleine Sumption is a British political scientist who is Director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, which provides analysis of migration in the UK for public and policy audiences. Her research focuses on labour migration and the economic and social impacts of migration policies.

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