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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School

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Political Science,

#2901

Mounia Bennani-Chraïbi

#122711

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Mounia Bennani-Chraïbi is a Moroccan political scientist, author and professor at the University of Lausanne. She published several works on activism, social media, youth issues and elections. Biography Mounia attended Paris Institute of Political Studies, where she earned her PhD in political science in 1993.

#2902

Malinda S. Smith

#114999

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Malinda S. Smith is a Canadian political scientist. She is the inaugural Vice-Provost of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, an Associate Vice President Research and a full professor of political science at the University of Calgary. Previously, she was a professor of political science at the University of Alberta, where she also held a 2018 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Fellow and served as a Provost Fellow in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Policy in the Office of the Provost. She specializes in equity, social justice, diversity and intersectionality studies, particularly as they are pra...

#2903

Denise Walsh

#135191

Overall Influence

#2904

Emad Shahin

#69969

Overall Influence

1957 - 2009 (52 years)

Emad Shahin is an Egyptian professor of political science. He is currently a visiting professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He is editor-in-chief of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Politics, and professor of public policy at The American University in Cairo . His work focuses on Comparative Politics, Democracy and Political Reform in Muslim societies, Islam and Politics, and Political Economy of the Middle East.

#2905

İver B. Neumann

#153924

Overall Influence

#2906

Michael Mead Dean

#154055

Overall Influence

#2907

Toni Haastrup

#113221

Overall Influence

Toni Haastrup is a social scientist with expertise in global politics. She is a Professor, & Chair in Global Politics at the University of Manchester. Her research interrogates the manifestation of power hierarchies in global politics, with research interests encompassing a wide range of themes, including peace and security in Africa, feminist, postcolonial and decolonial approaches to international relations, and regional and global governance – she has published extensively in these areas. In addition to her academic work, Toni Haastrup frequently works with government mechanisms and intern...

#2908

Quin Monson

#135362

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

J. Quin Monson is an American political scientist and associate professor of political science at Brigham Young University. He is also a senior scholar at the university's Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy.

#2909

Robert Maranto

#135024

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Robert Anthony Maranto is a political scientist who holds the 21st Century Chair in Leadership at the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. Maranto earned his doctorate in political science from the University of Minnesota in 1989, and has taught at ten colleges and universities. The son of a career bureaucrat, he is strongly interested in efforts to make public bureaucracies better serve the public. He has written widely on civil service reform, university reform, and school reform, particularly on charter schools.

#2910

Joseph Fornieri

#104299

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Joseph R. Fornieri is an American political historian and Professor of Political Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He is an expert on the political ideology of Abraham Lincoln. Although Fornieri is primarily professionally focused on Lincoln, his works often contain echoes of ancient Greek society, Christian values, and allusions to significant Rochester figures .

#2911

David G. Winter

#154558

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

#2912

Anatoly Gromyko

Anatoly Gromyko

#36985

Overall Influence

1932 - 2017 (85 years)

Anatoly Andreyevich Gromyko was a Soviet and Russian scientist and diplomat. He specialized in American and African studies as well as international relations, and was a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Union of Russian Artists.

#2913

Tamar Meisels

#117489

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Tamar Meisels is a Professor of Government and Policy in the Department of Political Science at Tel Aviv University, and a political theorist. Biography Her father, Andrew Meisels, is a descendant of the Meisels family and was a foreign correspondent, author, and broadcaster. Her mother Martha Meisels, was a consumer affairs reporter for the Jerusalem Post.

#2914

Ivar S. Peterson

#154735

Overall Influence

#2915

Michel Hockx

#82804

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Michel Hockx is a professor of Chinese Literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and the Director of the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. Hockx previously served as a Professor of Chinese at SOAS, University of London and as Founding Director of the China Institute.

#2916

Simona Sharoni

#91265

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Simona Sharoni is a feminist scholar and activist who is currently Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Merrimack College. Early life and education Sharoni was born in Romania in 1961. She immigrated with her parents to Israel in 1963. She earned an M.A. degree in Counseling from Haifa University. In 1989 she moved to the United States to pursue doctoral studies, and holds a Ph.D. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University.

#2917

Ray Pawson

#154954

Overall Influence

#2918

Dvora J. Yanow

#155023

Overall Influence

#2919

Piers Robinson

#91399

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Piers Gregory Robinson is a British academic researcher in the field of media studies. He is also a co-director of the Organisation for Propaganda Studies and a founder of the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media . He has authored a number of publications on the CNN effect. He has attracted criticism for disputing the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian Civil War.

#2920

Amrita Basu

#114090

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Amrita Basu is an American academic and political scientist. She currently is a professor at Amherst College where she holds affiliations in the departments of Political Science, Sexuality, Women's, & Gender Studies, Asian Languages & Civilizations, and Black Studies.

#2921

Hikmet Sami Türk

#95741

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Hikmet Sami Türk is a Turkish academic and politician. He was at the faculty of law of Ankara University from 1967 until 1995. Elected to parliament from 1995 to 2002 for the Democratic Left Party, he was Minister of Defense and Minister of Justice. He joined the faculty of Bilkent University in 2005. On April 29, 2009 he survived an assassination attempt by Dev-Sol.

#2922

Vojislav Stanovčić

#112403

Overall Influence

1930 - 2017 (87 years)

Professor Vojislav Stanovcic is a Serbian political scientist and theorist and a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts . Early life Stanovcic was born in Ubli, near Herceg Novi, Kingdom of Yugoslavia . He graduated from the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law , continued graduate studies of the theory of law, and received PhD in Political Science from the University of Belgrade in 1965 with the dissertation “Industrial democracy – Ideas in British Socio-Political Theories”. As a postgraduate student he also studied comparative literature. Working at the Faculty of Political Sc...

#2923

Susan Franceschet

#81081

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Susan Franceschet is a Canadian political scientist. She is a professor of political science at The University of Calgary. She studies the representation of women both in legislatures and government cabinets, gender quotas for the minimum representation of women in government, and the interaction of gender and public policy. She has written about women's participation in the politics of Chile.

#2924

William Wallace, Baron Wallace of Saltaire

#118187

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

William John Lawrence Wallace, Baron Wallace of Saltaire, , is a British academic, writer, and Liberal Democrat politician, who was a Lord in Waiting from 2010 to 2015. Early life Wallace was educated at Westminster Abbey Choir School, where as a chorister he sang at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, and St Edward's School, Oxford. He went to King's College, Cambridge, in 1959, reading History . As an undergraduate at Cambridge, Wallace joined all three political clubs . He decided that the Liberal Party was the most attractive and, in 1961, he was elected vice-president of the Ca...

#2925

Alfred Diamant

#115680

Overall Influence

1917 - 2012 (95 years)

Alfred Diamant was an Austrian-born American political scientist. His main contribution was in the field of comparative politics and comparative public administration. He was a member of the Comparative Administration Group and a co-chairperson of the Council for European Studies based at Columbia University. According to Peter Alexis Gourevitch, Diamant was both "on the Executive Committee of the Council for European Studies and the Interuniversity Center for European Studies in Montreal". Diamant's areas of expertise were "Comparative Western European Politics and Social Policy". Together...

#2926

Uk Heo

#118355

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Uk Heo is a university distinguished professor of political science in the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Education Heo obtained his B.A. from Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea. He then went on to earn his MA degree from the University of Wyoming and finally his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University.

#2927

Michael Bang Petersen

#106622

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (44 years)

Michael Bang Petersen is a Danish political scientist. He is a professor at Aarhus University, with research focusing on human evolutionary psychology and its role in politics. Starting in 2020, he led HOPE, a project examining responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in democratic countries and contributing to the Danish government's response to the pandemic.

#2928

William Inboden

William Inboden

#70585

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

William Charles Inboden III is an American academic, writer, and former White House staffer. Inboden is the executive director and William Powers, Jr. Chair of the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin. He also serves as an associate professor of public affairs at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and Distinguished Scholar at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, as well as a Senior Fellow at the Trinity Forum. On June 12, 2023, it was announced that he is joining the University of Florida as the director of the Hamilton Center. He is married to Dr.

#2929

Walter DeVries

#50160

Overall Influence

1929 - 2019 (90 years)

Walter Dale de Vries was a political consultant, author, and founder of the North Carolina Institute of Political Leadership. James M. Perry, the chief political correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, said this about his book The Ticket-Splitter : "DeVries and Tarrance, scholars who have worked in the political hedge-rows, have brilliantly destroyed generations of conventional wisdom about how America votes and why they vote as they do. The Ticket-Splitter has opened new vistas in political research techniques and election strategies."

#2930

Donald Matthews

#98378

Overall Influence

1925 - 2007 (82 years)

Donald Rowe Matthews was a University of Washington political scientist. He was best known for his landmark 1960 book on the United States Senate, U.S. Senators and Their World, which was reissued six times and used as a textbook in some university courses. U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was serving as Senate Majority Leader when Matthews book was published described the book as a "landmark in the study of the Senate."

#2931

Harald Malmgren

#82250

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Harald Bernard Malmgren is a scholar, ambassador, and international negotiator who has been senior aide to US Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford, and to US Senators Abraham A. Ribicoff and Russell B. Long, United States Senate Committee on Finance. He has acted as an advisor to many foreign leaders and CEOs of financial institutions and corporate businesses and has been a frequent author of articles and papers on global economic, political, and security affairs.

#2932

William Birenbaum

#65165

Overall Influence

1923 - 2010 (87 years)

William Marvin Birenbaum was an American educator and college administrator who served in leadership positions at the New School for Social Research, Long Island University and at Staten Island Community College , and received national attention for his efforts to address financial difficulties during his term as president of Antioch College. He also served as president of the National Student Association.

#2933

Henry Valen

#62223

Overall Influence

1924 - 2007 (83 years)

Henry Halfdan Valen was a Norwegian political scientist. He was born in Hadsel. He was appointed Professor at the University of Oslo from 1970. His main research interest has been electorate behavior. He chaired the Norwegian Social Science Data Services from 1974 to 1980. He was decorated Knight, First Class of the Order of St. Olav in 1998.

#2934

Manuel Knoll

#118572

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Manuel Andreas Knoll is a contemporary German scholar and Professor of Political Theory and Philosophy at Turkish-German University. His work focusses on ancient, modern and contemporary Political Philosophy and Ethics, especially on ancient and contemporary theories of justice.

#2935

David Shepherd Nivison

David Shepherd Nivison

#48913

Overall Influence

1923 - 2014 (91 years)

David Shepherd Nivison was an American sinologist known for his publications on late imperial and ancient Chinese history, philology, and philosophy, and his 40 years as a professor at Stanford University. Nivison is known for his use of archaeoastronomy to accurately determine the date of the founding of the Zhou dynasty as 1045 BC instead of the traditional date of 1122 BC.

#2936

Alex Battler

#85702

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Alex Battler , known in Russia under the pen name Oleg Alekseyevich Arin , is a Soviet-born Russian-Canadian scholar and political writer. He is a member of the organization «Defend Science» . Life and career Alex Battler was born in Astrakhan. In 1966 he entered the Faculty of Oriental studies of the A. Zhdanov Leningrad State University. After graduating in 1971, he enrolled in the post-graduate school at the Institute of the Far Eastern Studies in Moscow. In 1975 he was conferred the Degree of Candidate of Science , and in 1988 his Doctor of Science dissertation in the specialty "history of...

#2937

Christopher Gelpi

#145763

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Christopher Gelpi is an American political scientist at Ohio State University. He is currently the Director of the Mershon Center for Conflict Resolution, the Endowed Chair in Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution, and a published author who writes on the sources of international military conflict and American public opinion on foreign policy issues.

#2938

Ruth Linn

#67103

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Ruth Linn is a professor in the Department of Counseling and Human Development at the University of Haifa. Specializing in moral psychology, she has focused on moral disobedience, including resistance to authority.

#2939

Peter Cadogan

#52938

Overall Influence

1921 - 2007 (86 years)

Peter Cadogan was an English writer and political activist. Life On 26 January 1921, Cadogan was born in Newcastle upon Tyne. For his education, Cadogan attendeded The King's School, Tynemouth during the 1930s. He studied history at King's College, Durham. For his career, Cadogan started out with an insurance company. In 1941, he joined the Royal Air Force Air Sea Rescue and served until 1946. On his demobilisation, he became a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. He also was a teacher in Northampton and Cambridge following his 1949 marriage.

#2940

Yalçın Akdoğan

#110500

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Yalçın Akdoğan is a Turkish politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey from 2014 to 2016. A member of the ruling Justice and Development Party , Akdoğan became a Member of Parliament representing Ankara's first electoral district at the 2011 general election and was re-elected in June 2015.

#2941

Matthew Søberg Shugart

#156438

Overall Influence

#2942

Eric Bjornlund

#125744

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Eric Bjornlund is an American expert in democratization assistance and election observation and co-founder and president of Democracy International and the author of Beyond Free and Fair: Monitoring Elections and Building Democracy. Bjornlund is also a lawyer and adjunct professor at Georgetown University.

#2943

Hilda Tadria

#89116

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Hilda M. Tadria is a Ugandan women's rights activist, a gender and social development specialist, and the executive director of the Mentoring and Empowerment Programme for Young Women in Uganda . She has advised NGOs worldwide on gender, institutional management and social development, and has been an associate professor at Makerere University.

#2944

Raffaele Marchetti

#119840

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Raffaele Marchetti is an Italian political scientist and editorialist. Biography He is deputy rector for internationalization and full professor at LUISS Guido Carli of Rome, where he teaches International Relations in the Department of Political Sciences and in the School of Government. In LUISS he held a Jean Monnet Module on European Union’s Engagement with Civil Society and coordinates the preparatory course for the diplomatic concours and a course on strategic affairs. He acts also as external evaluator for a number of public institutions and private companies at the national and intern...

#2945

Kathy Cramer

#122609

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Katherine J. Cramer is an American political scientist. She is a professor in the political science department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and director of the Morgridge Center for Public Service.

#2946

Michael Wilson

#92242

Overall Influence

1937 - 2019 (82 years)

Michael Holcombe Wilson was a Canadian businessman, politician and diplomat who served as minister of finance from 1984 to 1991 and minister of international trade from 1991 to 1993 under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

#2947

Caroline Tolbert

#80816

Overall Influence

Caroline Tolbert is an American political scientist. She is a professor of political science at the University of Iowa. She studies elections, voting, and civic engagement in American politics. Much of her work deals with peoples' capacity to use internet technology, digital technology policy, and the relationship between technology use and social participation.

#2948

Harold E. Burkhart

#156830

Overall Influence

#2949

Saul Rae

#84899

Overall Influence

1914 - 1999 (85 years)

Saul Forbes Rae was a Canadian diplomat during the Pearsonian era of Canadian foreign policy. Life and career Rae's father was born Goodman Cohen. in Palanga, Lithuania. The Cohen family had moved to Scotland fleeing the pogroms of the 1890s, and there Goodman met Helen Rae, the daughter of a metal plater in the Glasgow shipyards. The romance and subsequent marriage caused considerable turmoil in both families. Cohen adopted his wife's surname, and the couple decided to move to Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1912. Saul was born in Hamilton, Ontario on December 31. He had two siblings, an older siste...

#2950

Janelle Wong

#122243

Overall Influence

Janelle Staci Wong is an American political scientist. She is a Professor of American Studies, Government and Politics, and core faculty member in the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Maryland, College Park.

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