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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Political Science,

#1801

Susan Pharr

#56476

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Susan J. Pharr is an academic in the field of political science, a Japanologist, and Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics, director of Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at Harvard University. Her current research focuses on the changing nature of relations between citizens and states in Asia, and on the forces that shape civil society over time.

#1802

Vera Schwarcz

#42940

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Vera Schwarcz was the Freeman Professor of East Asian Studies at Wesleyan University. Her BA was from Vassar College, with a MA from Yale, where she studied with Jonathan Spence, a MAA from Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. from Stanford University. From 1979 to 1980, she studied at Peking University as part the first group of American students admitted after the establishment of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China. In addition to works of history, Schwarcz writes poetry.

#1803

John Cloudsley-Thompson

John Cloudsley-Thompson

#65237

Overall Influence

1921 - 2013 (92 years)

John Leonard Cloudsley-Thompson DSc CBiol FSB FRES FZS was a British naturalist renowned for his work on desert fauna. He was a tank commander during the Second World War. Biography Early life Thompson was born in Murree, in pre-partition India , where his father worked in public health. He returned to the UK to be educated at Marlborough College and then learn about natural sciences at Pembroke College, Cambridge.

#1804

Hannah McGlade

#44761

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Hannah McGlade CF is an Australian academic, human rights advocate and lawyer. She is a Kurin Minang Noongar woman of the Bibulman nation and is an associate professor at Curtin University's law school. She was appointed Senior Indigenous Fellow at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2016 and has been a member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues since 2020.

#1805

Pekka Korhonen

#61122

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Pekka Korhonen is a Finnish political scientist. He is a professor of world politics at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. His research interests concern world politics and Asia. Korhonen is currently studying Asia as a concept.

#1806

Flynt Leverett

#76153

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Flynt L. Leverett is a former senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., and a professor at the Pennsylvania State University School of International Affairs. From March 2002 to March 2003, he served as the senior director for Middle East affairs on the National Security Council .

#1807

Susan Baker

#59318

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Susan Baker is a Professor Emerita in the School of Social Sciences and former co-director of the Sustainable Places Research Institute at Cardiff University. Her research concerns environmental governance in the European Union and ecofeminism, gender and the environment.

#1808

Deepa M. Ollapally

#88719

Overall Influence

Deepa M. Ollapally is research professor of international affairs and the associate director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. She is also the director of the Rising Powers Initiative launched by the Elliott School in 2009.

#1809

Michael MccGwire

Michael MccGwire

#27421

Overall Influence

1924 - 2016 (92 years)

Michael Kane MccGwire was a British international relations specialist known for his work on Cold War geopolitics and Soviet naval strategy. A former Royal Navy commander, he was Professor of Maritime and Strategic Studies at Dalhousie University in Canada and then a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC. He was a well-known critic of nuclear deterrence theory.

#1810

Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga

#41642

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga is a Latvian politician who served as the sixth President of Latvia from 1999 to 2007. She is the first and to date only woman to hold the post. She was elected President of Latvia in 1999 and re-elected for the second term in 2003.

#1811

Howard Pawley

#55141

Overall Influence

1934 - 2015 (81 years)

Howard Russell Pawley was a Canadian politician and professor who was the 18th premier of Manitoba from 1981 to 1988. Prior to his premiership, Pawley served in various ministerial positions after his tenure in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba.

#1812

John H. Bunzel

#48437

Overall Influence

1924 - 2018 (94 years)

John Harvey Bunzel was an American academic. He served as president of San Jose State University from 1970 to 1978 and was a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution since 1978. He was formerly a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights.

#1813

Gregory B. Lee

#29104

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Gregory B. Lee is an academic, author, and broadcaster. Lee is Founding Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of St Andrews. He was until July 2020, Director of the French research Institute for Transtextual and Transcultural Studies based at Jean Moulin University Lyon 3. Lee was previously Chair Professor of Chinese and Transcultural Studies and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at the City University of Hong Kong. From 2007 to 2010 Lee was First Vice-President of Jean Moulin University Lyon 3. In 2010, Lee was made a Chevalier in the French Order of Academic Palms.

#1814

Irving Bluestone

#39339

Overall Influence

1917 - 2007 (90 years)

Irving Julius Bluestone was an American trade union leader. He was the chief negotiator for almost a half a million workers at General Motors in the 1970s, and an advocate of worker participation in management. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Herman and Rebecca Chasman Bluestone, Lithuanian Jewish emigrants.

#1815

Yuri Bregel

#57234

Overall Influence

1925 - 2016 (91 years)

Yuri Enohovich Bregel was one of the world's leading historians of Islamic Central Asia. He published extensively on Persian- and Turkic-language history and historiography, and on political, economic and ethnic history in Central Asia and the Muslim world. He lived in the Soviet Union , Israel , and the United States .

#1816

Ray Marshall

#32281

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (96 years)

Freddie Ray Marshall is an American economist who is the professor emeritus and Audre and Bernard Rapoport Centennial Chair in Economics and Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Early life and education Marshall was born in 1928 in Oak Grove, Louisiana and had lived in an orphanage. Marshall joined the United States Navy in 1943 when he was fifteen years old and served during World War II. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Millsaps College, a Master of Arts from Louisiana State University, and a PhD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley in economics. ...

#1817

Kang Sang-jung

#38357

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Kang Sang-jung , also known by his Japanese name , is a second-generation Zainichi Korean political scientist, writer and public commentator. He has been an academic at several Japanese universities including the University of Tokyo , and President of Seigakuin University . He is currently Chairman of the Board of Kumamoto Prefectural Theatre.

#1818

Monica Toft

#61227

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Monica Duffy Toft is an American international relations scholar. Her research interests include international security and strategy, ethnic and religious violence, civil wars, and the relationship between demography and national security. Among her researches, her theory of indivisible territory explains how certain conflicts turn violent while others not, and when it is likely for a conflict to become a violent. Since 2017 she holds the position of Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University, and Director of the Fletcher School's Center ...

#1819

Robert S. Ross

#70915

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Robert S. Ross is a professor of political science at Boston College, associate of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University, senior advisor of the security studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is one of the foremost American specialists on Chinese foreign and defense policy and U.S.-China relations.

#1820

Jocelyn Benson

#22408

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (47 years)

Jocelyn Benson is an American democracy advocate, politician, and former academic administrator. Since 2019, she has been the 43rd Secretary of State of Michigan. She is a former dean of Wayne State University Law School, a co-founder of the Military Spouses of Michigan, and a board member of the Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality. Benson is the author of State Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process.

#1821

Joseph A. Kéchichian

#45946

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Joseph Albert Kéchichian is a political scientist. Biography Kéchichian received his doctorate in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia in 1985, where he also taught , and assumed the assistant deanship in international studies . In the summer of 1989, he was a Hoover Fellow at Stanford University . Between 1990 and 1996, he labored at the Santa Monica-based RAND Corporation as an Associate Political Scientist, and was a lecturer at the University of California in Los Angeles .

#1822

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf

#43373

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf or Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf is an Iranian conservative politician, former military officer, and current Speaker of the Parliament of Iran since 2020. He held office as the Mayor of Tehran from 2005 to 2017. Ghalibaf was formerly Iran's Chief of police from 2000 to 2005 and commander of the Revolutionary Guards' Air Force from 1997 to 2000.

#1823

Čedomir Čupić

#40344

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Čedomir Čupić is a Serbian political scientist and professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade. He became known to the wider public in 2001, when he became a member, and later president, of the national Anti-Corruption Council.

#1824

Dominique Schnapper

Dominique Schnapper

#34478

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Dominique Schnapper was a member of the Constitutional Council of France from 2001 to 2010. She is also a scholar and professor of sociology. Her sociological studies have been largely historical and have ranged from inquiries into minorities and labour to others on citizenship and nations. She has been named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, and an Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

#1825

Eric Hargan

#19692

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Eric David Hargan is an American lawyer and government official who served as United States Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services from October 2017 to January 2021. A member of the Republican Party, Hargan previously acted in this role in 2007 under the George W. Bush administration.

#1826

Kristen Monroe

#59669

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Kristen Renwick Monroe is an American political scientist, specializing in political psychology and ethics. Her work on altruism and moral choice is presented in a trilogy of award-winning books in which Monroe argues that our sense of self in relation to others sets and delineates the range of choice options we find available, not just morally but cognitively.

#1827

David Axelrod

#29776

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

David M. Axelrod is an American political consultant, analyst, and former White House official. He is best known for being the chief strategist for Barack Obama's presidential campaigns. After Obama's election, Axelrod was appointed as Senior Advisor to the President. He left the position in early 2011 and became the Senior Strategist for Obama's successful re-election campaign in 2012. Axelrod wrote for the Chicago Tribune, and joined CNN as Senior Political Commentator in 2015. Until recently, Axelrod served as the director of the non-partisan University of Chicago Institute of Politics. H...

#1828

Les Aspin

#40172

Overall Influence

1938 - 1995 (57 years)

Leslie Aspin Jr. was an American Democratic Party politician who served as the U.S. representative for Wisconsin's 1st congressional district from 1971 to 1993 and as the 18th United States Secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1994.

#1829

Cho Yoon-je

#47663

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Cho Yoon-je is a South Korean diplomat who served as the South Korean ambassador to the United States between 2017 and 2019. He was appointed as South Korea's ambassador to the U.S. in 2017 by South Korean president Moon Jae-in.

#1830

Jim Bulpitt

#65389

Overall Influence

1937 - 1999 (62 years)

James Graham Bulpitt was a professor of Politics at the University of Warwick and a political scientist. Early life and education Bulpitt was born in Wembley, London to a working-class family. He studied at the University of Exeter and Manchester and then went on to be a Research Fellow at the University of Milan. Bulpitt returned to the UK to be a lecturer at the University of Strathclyde.

#1831

Allan S. Detsky

#46670

Overall Influence

Allan Steven Detsky is a Canadian physician and health policy expert. He is the ex-Physician-in-Chief at Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, Professor of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, University of Toronto, and Senior Scientist, Division of Clinical Investigation and Human Physiology, Toronto General Research Institute.

#1832

Vivienne Jabri

#44764

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Vivienne Jabri is a British academic and writer. She is Professor of International Politics in the Department of War Studies, King's College London. Affiliations Groundzero: Conflitti globali ISA's International Political Sociology section, elected member of the executive committeeBritish International Studies Association Executive CommitteeChair, ISA's International Political Sociology section.

#1833

David R. Morgan

#78844

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

David R. Morgan is a retired professor of political science at the University of Oklahoma where he was the Henry Bellmon Chair of Public Service. Morgan served two years as the first city manager of Yukon, Oklahoma.

#1834

Khan Sarwar Murshid

Khan Sarwar Murshid

#36083

Overall Influence

1924 - 2012 (88 years)

Khan Sarwar Murshid was a Bangladeshi educationist, diplomat and intellectual. Early life and education Sarwar Murshid was born on 1 July 1924 in his maternal home, the Munsef Bari of Comilla in Tipperah District, Bengal Province. He belonged to a Bengali Muslim family of Khans hailing from the village of Nasirabad in Nabinagar, Brahmanbaria. His father, Ali Ahmed Khan, was an advocate and All-India Muslim League politician, and served as a member in both the Bengal Legislative Assembly and the East Pakistan Provincial Assembly.

#1835

John Dunn

#39782

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

John M. Dunn was the eighth president of Western Michigan University. Dunn earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from Northern Illinois University, and he earned an Ed.D. in physical education from Brigham Young University.

#1836

Flávia Biroli

#94559

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Flávia Biroli is a Brazilian political scientist. She is the author of several books about democracy, gender, and the media. She is a professor of political science at the University of Brasília and a specialist in feminist political theory.

#1837

Bates Gill

#40174

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Bates Gill is an expert on Chinese foreign policy and politics and a former Director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute . Gill has a long record of research and publication on both international and regional security issues. These include arms control, non-proliferation, peacekeeping and military-technical development—and all mainly with regard to China and the Asia-Pacific region. His work has also encompassed other contemporary security-related issues including multilateral security organizations, the impact of domestic politics and development on the foreign policies of states, and the nexus of public health and security.

#1838

Padraig O'Malley

#55819

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Padraig O'Malley is an Irish international peacemaker, author, and professor. O'Malley specializes in the problems of divided societies, such as South Africa and Northern Ireland. He has written extensively on these subjects and has been actively involved in promoting dialogue among representatives of differing factions. He's currently the John Joseph Moakley Distinguished Professor of Peace and Reconciliation at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

#1839

Judy Feder

#79368

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Judith M. Feder is a Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University and was Dean of the Georgetown Public Policy Institute from 1999 through 2007; she is a member of the Institute of Medicine. Feder is also a Democratic policy consultant and served in the Clinton administration. She ran unsuccessfully in 2006 and 2008 for the United States House of Representatives to represent Virginia's 10th congressional district.

#1840

Erik Voeten

#53621

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Erik Voeten is a Dutch political scientist. Voeten studied public administration and public policy at the University of Twente and earned a doctorate at Princeton University. He completed postdoctoral research at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, then joined the George Washington University faculty as an assistant professor. Voeten was named Peter F. Krogh Professor of Global Justice and Geopolitics at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service within Georgetown University in 2007. He succeeded Jon Pevehouse as chief editor of the International Organi...

#1841

Elizabeth Shakman Hurd

Elizabeth Shakman Hurd

#51400

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Elizabeth Shakman Hurd is an American scholar of religion and politics. She is professor of political science and religious studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Academic career Hurd was educated at Wesleyan University , Yale University , and Johns Hopkins University . She has taught at Northwestern University since 2002. Hurd is known for her work on Religion and politics in the United States, religion and Foreign policy of the United States, and religion and international relations. She also studies relations between the United States and the Middle East, particularly Turkey and Iran.

#1842

Kalu Ndukwe Kalu

Kalu Ndukwe Kalu

#38504

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Kalu Ndukwe Kalu is a Nigerian-born American political scientist specializing in comparative institutional development, national security policy, and organizational systems. He is currently a Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science and National Security Policy at Auburn University Montgomery.; and Docent Professor at the University of Tampere, Finland

#1843

Wilfried Loth

#31566

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Wilfried Loth is a German historian and political scientist. Life Wilfried Loth was born 29 August 1948 in Wadern. From 1966 to 1972, he studied German studies, History, Philosophy and Education at Saarland University. He obtained his doctorate in 1974. From 1974 to 1984 he worked there as an assistant lecturer and in 1983 he obtained his habilitation in Modern history with a dissertation on Catholics in the German Empire: Political Catholicism in the Crisis of Wilhelminian Germany. From 1984 to 1985 he was Professor of Political Science at the Free University of Berlin, then Professor of Political Science at the University of Münster from 1985 to 1986.

#1844

M. G. S. Narayanan

M. G. S. Narayanan

#30980

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Muttayil Govindamenon Sankara Narayanan, commonly known as M. G. S. Narayanan is an Indian historian, academic and political commentator. He headed the Department of History at Calicut University from 1976 to 1990. and served as the Chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research.

#1845

Didier Bigo

#28056

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Didier Bigo is a French academic from Lille and Professor of International Relations at King's College London and at Sciences Po, Paris. He has authored two books, Polices en réseaux. L'expérience européenne and Pouvoir et obéissance en Centrafrique and has been the editor for many others.

#1846

Aseem Prakash

#83819

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Aseem Prakash is a professor of Political Science, the Walker Family Professor of the College of music and Sciences and the Founding Director of the UW Center for Environmental Politics. He serves as the General Editor of the Cambridge University Press Series on Business and Public Policy and the Associate Editor of Business & Society. In addition to serving on editorial boards of several additional journals, he has been elected as the Vice-President of the International Studies Association . Professor Prakash is a member of National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Board on...

#1847

Adam Hanieh

#77195

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Adam Hanieh is a development studies academic based in the United Kingdom. He is Professor in Development Studies at SOAS, University of London, a founding member of the SOAS Centre for Palestine Studies, and a former member of the Council for British Research in the Levant. He is noted for his research on Marxism, the political economy of the Middle East, labour migration, class and state formation in the Gulf Cooperation Council, and Palestine studies.

#1848

Donald B. Ayer

#41799

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Donald Belton Ayer is an American attorney who served as the 24th United States Deputy Attorney General from 1989 to 1990, under President George H. W. Bush. Education and career Ayer graduated from Stanford University with a Bachelor of Arts in History in 1971, with great distinction. In 1973, he graduated from Harvard University with a Master of Arts in American History, and received his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1975. He clerked for Judge Malcolm Richard Wilkey of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, followed by a year with Associate Justice William Rehnquist of the U.S.

#1849

Abdul Aziz Said

Abdul Aziz Said

#48275

Overall Influence

1930 - 2021 (91 years)

Abdul Aziz Said was Professor Emeritus of International Relations in the School of International Service at American University, Washington, D.C., and founding Director of the university's International Peace and Conflict Resolution Division. Said was well known for helping shift the focus of International Relations theory from real politic-based on the concept that the law of power governs states, to new world order-based on cooperation and common security. Starting in the 1990s Said focused his work on peace and conflict resolution and later explored the relationship between spirituality an...

#1850

Norton E. Long

#77032

Overall Influence

1910 - 1993 (83 years)

Norton Enneking Long was a noted author in the fields of urban politics and public administration and a professor at the Center of Public Administration & Policy, Virginia Polytechnic Institute He was the son of a professor at Harvard University, where he received his A.B. , M.A. and Ph.D. in political science, and then studied in Germany. He taught at Harvard from 1935 to 1939, at Mount Holyoke College in 1939–40, and at Queens College from 1940 to 1942.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions