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,

#151

Christine King Farris

Christine King Farris

#9694

Overall Influence

1927 - 2023 (96 years)

Willie Christine King Farris was an American teacher and civil rights activist. King was the sister of Martin Luther King Jr. She taught at Spelman College and was the author of several books and was a public speaker on various topics, including the King family, multicultural education, and teaching.

#152

Susanne Hoeber Rudolph

#45909

Overall Influence

1930 - 2015 (85 years)

Susanne Hoeber Rudolph was an American author, political thinker and educationist. She was a William Benton Distinguished Service Professor Emerita at the University of Chicago and was actively interested in Politics, Political Economy and Political Sociology of South Asia, State Formation, Max Weber and the Politics of Category and Culture. The Government of India, in 2014, honored her, along with her husband, Lloyd I. Rudolph, for their services to literature and education, by bestowing on them the third highest civilian award, the Padma Bhushan.

#153

Beatriz Magaloni

#16699

Overall Influence

Beatriz Magaloni is a political scientist. She is the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations, Professor of Political Science, and a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Since 2021, Magaloni is also a Non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

#154

Jocelyn Elise Crowley

#40798

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Jocelyn Elise Crowley is a Professor of Public Policy at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, where she specializes in family law in the United States. Early life Crowley was born on September 5, 1970, in Englewood, New Jersey. She grew up in Warren Township, New Jersey with her sister Monica Crowley.

#155

Kori Schake

#28870

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Kori N. Schake is the Director of Foreign and Defense Policy at the American Enterprise Institute. She has held several high positions in the U.S. Defense and State Departments and on the National Security Council. She was a foreign-policy adviser to the McCain-Palin 2008 presidential campaign. Schake is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. She serves on the board of advisors of the Alexander Hamilton Society.

#156

Jessica Stern

#24226

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Jessica Eve Stern is an American scholar and academic on terrorism. Stern serves as a research professor at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. Earlier she had been a lecturer at Harvard University. She serves on the Hoover Institution Task Force on National Security and Law. In 2001, she was featured in Time magazine's series on Innovators. In 2009, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for her work on trauma and violence. Her book ISIS: The State of Terror , was co-authored with J.M. Berger.

#157

Susan L. Woodward

#41572

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Susan Lampland Woodward is a professor at the Political Science Program at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York since 2001. She is an expert on Balkan, East European, and post-Soviet affairs, on intervention in civil wars, and on postconflict reconstruction. She is the author of two books, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War , and Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia , about which the reviewer in Foreign Affairs wrote, "Woodward's argument is big and bold, challenging almost every major interpretation, from capitalist assumptions ...

#158

Danielle Allen

#16619

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Danielle Susan Allen is an American political scientist. She is the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University. She is also the former Director of the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University.

#159

Nikki Keddie

#11489

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (94 years)

Nikki R. Keddie is an American scholar of Eastern, Iranian, and women's history. She is Professor Emerita of History at University of California, Los Angeles. Biography Keddie was born in Brooklyn, New York. She received her B.A. at Radcliffe College, her M.A. from Stanford University and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. She has taught at University of Arizona and Scripps College in Claremont, California, before joining University of California, where she taught mainly Middle Eastern and Iranian history and eventually became full professor.

#160

Joan E. Spero

#33744

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Joan Edelman Spero is a Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, where she researches and writes about international philanthropy and its role in the global system. From 2009 to 2010, Ms. Spero was a visiting scholar at the Foundation Center, where she conducted research on the role of American private foundations in U.S. foreign policy and in the global system.

#161

Anne Norton

#22522

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Anne Norton is an American professor of political science and comparative literature. She is also known for her controversial anti-Semitic views. Early life As a child, Norton lived and traveled throughout the world with her family because her father was an officer in the U.S. Navy.

#162

Lynn Vavreck

#29346

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Lynn Vavreck is an American political scientist and columnist. She is the Marvin Hoffenberg Chair in American Politics and Public Policy at University of California, Los Angeles and a contributing columnist to The New York Times.

#163

Clarissa Rile Hayward

#49542

Overall Influence

Clarissa Rile Hayward is an American political scientist and political philosopher, currently a professor in political science at Washington University in St. Louis with affiliations in American culture studies, urban studies, and philosophy. Hayward studies the theory of political power, how political phenomena relate to theories of identity, and urban politics in the United States.

#164

Wangari Maathai

#22374

Overall Influence

1940 - 2011 (71 years)

Wangarĩ Muta Maathai was a Kenyan social, environmentalal, and political activist who founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women's rights. In 2004 she became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

#165

Karen Dawisha

#36063

Overall Influence

1949 - 2018 (69 years)

Karen Dawisha was an American political scientist and writer. She was a professor in the Department of Political Science at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and the director of The Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies.

#166

Annette Baker Fox

Annette Baker Fox

#21606

Overall Influence

1912 - 2011 (99 years)

Annette May Baker Fox was an American international relations scholar, who spent much of her career at Columbia University's Institute of War and Peace Studies. She was a pioneer in the academic study of small powers and middle powers and the books and articles she wrote on that subject are highly regarded in the field. She was director of the institute's Canadian Studies Program from 1977 to 1984.

#167

Marlène Laruelle

Marlène Laruelle

#21436

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Marlène Laruelle is a French historian, sociologist, and political scientist specializing on Eurasia and Europe. She is Research Professor and Director of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at the George Washington University . Laruelle is also a Co-Director of PONARS , Director of GW’s Central Asia Program, and Director of GW's Illiberalism Studies Program. She received her Ph.D. in history at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Cultures and spent time as a post-doc in the area of political science at Sciences Po in Paris. She is Senior Associate Scholar at the Institut français des relations internationales .

#168

Jennifer Welsh

#30814

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Jennifer Mary Welsh is a Canadian professor of international relations, currently working as the Canada 150 Research Chair in Global Governance and Security at McGill University. Welsh is the Director of the Centre for International Peace and Security Studies at McGill's Max Bell School of Public Policy, and a co-director of the Canadian Research Network on Women, Peace and Security. Welsh is a frequent commentator in Canadian media on foreign affairs.

#169

Catharine A. MacKinnon

Catharine A. MacKinnon

#9105

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Catharine Alice MacKinnon is an American feminist legal scholar, activist, and author. She is the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, where she has been tenured since 1990, and the James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. From 2008 to 2012, she was the special gender adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.

#170

Jennifer Hochschild

#46375

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

#171

Lisa Martin

#54113

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Lisa Martin is an American political scientist. She is a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She studies political institutions in international relations, including economic sanctions and cooperation between states. Martin was the first female editor of International Organization, where she also currently serves as a senior advisor to the journal's editorial board. In 2021, she was elected as president of the American Political Science Association for 2022-2023.

#172

Jean L. Cohen

#19988

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Jean Louise Cohen is the Nell and Herbert Singer Professor of Political Thought at Columbia University. She specializes in contemporary political and legal theory with particular research interests in democratic theory, critical theory, civil society, gender and the law.

#173

Brenda Shaffer

#35859

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Brenda Shaffer is an American scholar who holds positions as Fellow with the Atlantic Council and professor at University of Haifa . Shaffer was the former research director of the Caspian Studies Program at Harvard Kennedy School and past president of the Foreign Policy Section of the American Political Science Association. She specializes on energy in international relations and energy policy in the Caspian region and has written or edited several books of these topics, including "Energy Politics" and "Beyond the Resource Curse." Shaffer has also written a number of books on the topic of identity and culture in the Caucasus including explorations of Azeri literature and culture.

#174

Marlene Wind

#50943

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Marlene Wind is a Danish political scientist. She is a professor of political science at the University of Copenhagen, where she has been also Director of the Center for European Policy. She specializes in the law, policies, and politics of the European Union.

#175

Laura Silber

#29611

Overall Influence

Laura Silber is the Vice President for Advocacy and Communications at the Open Society Foundations, where she runs the Communications department and oversees advocacy strategy and public identity. Since 2007 she has been an adjunct professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.

#176

Anne Hessing Cahn

#40932

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (94 years)

Anne Hessing Cahn is a political author who holds a doctorate in political science from MIT. She was notable for her criticism of the CIA among other US agencies and leaders, particularly Team B and other aspects of the last days of the Cold War.

#177

Dessima Williams

Dessima Williams

#23307

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Dessima D Williams is a Grenadian diplomat and former Ambassador to the United Nations from Grenada who was reappointed to the ambassadorship in 2008. Since 2022 she has been President of the Senate.

#178

Robyn Eckersley

Robyn Eckersley

#29987

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Robyn Eckersley is a Professor and Head of Political Science in the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, Australia. Background Eckersley grew up in Perth and graduated in law from the University of Western Australia. She studied at the University of Cambridge, and has a PhD in environmental politics from the University of Tasmania. She was previously a public lawyer, then a lecturer at Monash University until 2001 when she moved to the University of Melbourne.

#179

Laura Sjoberg

#38592

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (45 years)

Laura Elizabeth Sjoberg is an American feminist scholar of international relations and international security. Her work specializes in gendered interpretations of just war theory, feminist security studies, and women's violence in global politics.

#180

Sharon Nazarian

#38928

Overall Influence

Sharon Nazarian is an Iranian-born American social activist, academic and philanthropist. She is currently the Senior Vice President, International Affairs for the Anti-Defamation League. Early life Sharon Nazarian was born in Tehran, Iran. Her father, Younes Nazarian, was a businessman, philanthropist, and an early investor in the satellite technology company Qualcomm. Her mother, Soraya Nazarian, is a sculptor. She has two brothers, Sam Nazarian, David Nazarian, and a sister, Shulamit Nazarian. During the Iranian Revolution of 1979, she immigrated to the United States, settling in Beverly Hi...

#181

Janne E. Nolan

#47392

Overall Influence

1951 - 2019 (68 years)

Janne E. Nolan was an American academic, foreign policy advisor, and expert on nuclear arms control and nonproliferation. She held senior positions in the Department of State, as a staffer for the Senate, and served on multiple blue ribbon commissions. She was well known for supporting generations of women in the traditionally male dominated field of nuclear security.

#182

Carol Anderson

#30161

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Carol Elaine Anderson is an American academic. She is the Charles Howard Candler professor of African American Studies at Emory University. Her research focuses on public policy with regard to race, justice, and equality.

#183

Celeste A. Wallander

Celeste A. Wallander

#45784

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Celeste Ann Wallander is an American international relations advisor who currently serves as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs at the United States Department of Defense.

#184

Kathryn M. Dominguez

Kathryn M. Dominguez

#39093

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Kathryn Mary Elizabeth Dominguez is a Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the University of Michigan and is a former nominee for the Governor of the U.S. Federal Reserve System. Early life and education Dominguez was born on November 26, 1960, in Los Angeles, California. She received her Artium Baccalaureus degree in 1982 from Vassar College. She received a Doctor of Philosophy in Economics in 1987 from Yale University. Prior to attaining her Ph.D., she served on the research staff of the Fiscal Analysis Division of the Congressional Budget Office during the summer of 1984 and as a ...

#185

Mary Jo Bane

#33628

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Mary Jo Bane is an American political scientist who focuses on children and welfare. She is currently the Thornton Bradshaw Professor at Harvard Kennedy School, and formerly the Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy and Director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy.

#186

Helga Hernes

#21739

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Helga Marie Hernes is a German-born Norwegian political scientist, diplomat, and politician for the Labour Party. Educated in the United States, she moved to Norway following her marriage to Norwegian sociologist and politician Gudmund Hernes whom she met during her studies. She was on faculty at the at the University of Bergen from 1970 to 1980 and subsequently held a number of positions in research management. Her research during the 1970s and 1980s focused on international politics, women's studies and the welfare state, and she is well known for her concept of state feminism, articulated in 1987.

#187

Doris Graber

#27429

Overall Influence

1923 - 2018 (95 years)

Doris Appel Graber was an American political scientist. Doris Appel was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on 11 November 1923, to Ernst and Marta Appel. She had a sister, Ruth. Doris Appel earned bachelor's and master's degrees in political science from the Washington University in St. Louis, and completed a doctorate at Columbia University in 1949. She studied international law and relations and her dissertation was titled, The Development of the Law of Belligerent Occupation: 1863-1914, A Historical Survey. She taught at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago and North Park College, prior to accepting a position as lecturer at University of Illinois at Chicago in 1963.

#188

Teija Tiilikainen

Teija Tiilikainen

#57364

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Teija Helena Tiilikainen is a Finnish political scientist. She has been the Director of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, Secretary of State at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, and a vice-chairperson of the executive board of the University of Helsinki. In August 2019 she was elected Director of the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats. Her research focuses on European integration and European security policy.

#189

Brooke Ackerly

#44331

Overall Influence

Brooke A. Ackerly is an American political scientist and Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University with affiliations to the Human and Organizational Development Department, Law School, Philosophy Department, and Women's and Gender Studies Program, noted for her research on grounded normative theory, feminist theory, feminist international relations, and scholar activism.

#190

Judith Wright

#12222

Overall Influence

1915 - 2000 (85 years)

Judith Arundell Wright was an Australian poet, environmentalist and campaigner for Aboriginal land rights. She was a recipient of the Christopher Brennan Award. Biography Judith Wright was born in Armidale, New South Wales. The eldest child of Phillip Wright and his first wife, Ethel, she spent most of her formative years in Brisbane and Sydney. Wright was of Cornish ancestry. Following the early death of her mother, she lived with her aunt and then boarded at New England Girls' School after her father's remarriage in 1929. After graduating, Wright studied philosophy, English, psychology and history at the University of Sydney.

#191

Annette Lu

#32807

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Annette Lu Hsiu-lien is a Taiwanese politician. A feminist active in the tangwai movement, she joined the Democratic Progressive Party in 1990, and was elected to the Legislative Yuan in 1992. Subsequently, she served as Taoyuan County Magistrate between 1997 and 2000, and was the Vice President of the Republic of China from 2000 to 2008, under President Chen Shui-bian. Lu announced her intentions to run for the presidency on 6 March 2007, but withdrew to support eventual DPP nominee Frank Hsieh. Lu ran again in 2012, but withdrew for a second time, ceding the nomination to DPP chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen.

#192

Mala Htun

#28313

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

#193

Lois Rice

#22176

Overall Influence

1933 - 2017 (84 years)

Lois Ann Dickson Fitt Rice was an American corporate executive, scholar, and education policy expert. Known as the ‘‘mother of the Pell Grant” because of her work lobbying for its creation, she was national vice president of the College Board from 1973 until 1981. According to the Wall Street Journal, she was “among the first wave of African-American women serving on boards of major US corporations,” and under president Bill Clinton, she was a member of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board. For years, she was an economic studies expert at the Brookings Institution concentrating on edu...

#194

Catherine Boone

#50937

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Catherine Boone is Professor of Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Boone is a specialist in property rights, political economy, and territorial politics in Africa.

#195

Nuray Mert

#30534

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Nuray Mert, is a Turkish columnist and political scientist. She is a columnist for Hürriyet Daily News. Mert is also a Bilderberg participant. Academic career After graduating from Feyziye Mektepleri Işık College, she studied political science and history at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, where she obtained the master's degree on a thesis entitled Prens Sabahaddin ve Terakki Mecmuası , and the doctorate on a thesis entitled Erken Cumhuriyet Döneminde Laik Düşünce . She worked for some time as a research assistant at Boğaziçi University, after which she became lecturer at the Department of Eco...

#196

Maya Forstater

#22578

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Maya Forstater is a British business studies and international development researcher who is the claimant in Forstater v Centre for Global Development Europe. The case established that gender critical views are protected as a belief under the Equality Act 2010, while stating that the judgment does not permit misgendering transgender people with impunity. At a subsequent full merits hearing, the Employment Tribunal upheld Forstater's case, concluding that she had suffered direct discrimination on the basis of her gender critical beliefs. The judgement for remedies was handed down in June 2023,...

#197

Marie Gottschalk

#22862

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Marie Gottschalk is an American political scientist and professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, known for her work on mass incarceration in the United States. Gottschalk is the author of The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America and Caught: the Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics . Her research investigates the origins of the carceral state in the United States, the critiques of the scope and size of the carceral network, and the intersections of the carceral state with race and economic inequality.

#198

Esther Brimmer

#37327

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Esther Diane Brimmer is an American foreign policy expert and former Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs. In June 2013, she left her post as Assistant Secretary and returned to academia.

#199

Eileen McDonagh

#20990

Overall Influence

Eileen McDonagh is an American political scientist. She is a professor of political science at Northeastern University. She has published works on topics like women's participation in politics, gender imbalances in sport, and abortion law.

#200

Judith Stiehm

#26352

Overall Influence

Judith Hicks Stiehm is an American political scientist. She is a professor of political science at Florida International University. She studies civil-military relations in the United States, processes of social change, and the status of women. She has published books on the effectiveness of nonviolent resistance, the results of mandated orders to admit women to the United States Air Force Academy, and the functioning of the U.S. Army War College. She was the first woman to be a university provost in State University System of Florida.

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