Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

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Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Political Science,

#2951

Matt Walsh

#39763

Overall Influence

1986 - Present (38 years)

Matt Walsh is an American right-wing political commentator and activist. He is the host of The Matt Walsh Show podcast and is a columnist for the American conservative website The Daily Wire. He has authored four books and starred in The Daily Wire online documentary film What Is a Woman?

#2952

Richard Vernon

#69434

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Richard Vernon is a Canadian academic and from 1981 he has been Professor of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario. Professor Vernon was awarded a B.A. in Historical Tripos in 1966 and in 1970 an M.A., both at the University of Cambridge. He was awarded his Ph.D. at the London School of Economics.

#2953

Susie Bright

#55538

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Susannah Bright is an American feminist, author and journalist, often on the subject of politics and sexuality. She is the recipient of the 2017 Humanist Feminist Award, and is one of the early writers/activists referred to as a sex-positive feminist. Her papers are part of the Human Sexuality Collection at Cornell University Library along with the archives of On Our Backs.

#2954

Robert L. Payton

#62570

Overall Influence

1926 - 2011 (85 years)

Robert Louis Payton was a jazz musician, writer and editor, president of two universities; , a State Department official, and ambassador to the African republic of Cameroon. He also served as a founding trustee of Editorial Projects in Education, the organization that helped start The Chronicle of Higher Education. He was the first full-time director of the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.

#2955

Douglas A. Hibbs

#157395

Overall Influence

#2956

Yuri Karash

#132607

Overall Influence

1963 - 2017 (54 years)

Yuri Yurevich Karash was a Russian space policy expert and journalist. Academic background In 1990, Karash was one of the finalists in the Soviet Journalist-in-Space project and a candidate for space flight. In 1992, while already having a Russian Candidate of Sciences degree, he graduated from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C., with Masters of International Public Policy degree. The same year he was accepted for PhD training at the School of International Service in the American University in Washington, D.C. Durin...

#2957

Herbert E. Longenecker

#120926

Overall Influence

1912 - 2010 (98 years)

Herbert Eugene Longenecker was a biochemist who became an academic administrator at the University of Pittsburgh and University of Illinois Medical Center before becoming the eleventh president of Tulane University from 1960 to 1975.

#2958

Kurt Gerhard Weyland

#157538

Overall Influence

#2959

Joan Halifax

#12541

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Joan Jiko Halifax is an American Zen Buddhist teacher, anthropologist, ecologist, civil rights activist, hospice caregiver, and the author of several books on Buddhism and spirituality. She currently serves as abbot and guiding teacher of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a Zen Peacemaker community which she founded in 1990. Halifax-roshi has received Dharma transmission from both Bernard Glassman and Thich Nhat Hanh, and previously studied with the Korean master Seung Sahn. In the 1970s she collaborated on LSD research projects with her ex-husband Stanislav Grof, in addition to other collaborative efforts with Joseph Campbell and Alan Lomax.

#2960

Dara Strolovitch

Dara Strolovitch

#133330

Overall Influence

Dara Strolovitch is an American political scientist, currently Professor of Women's Gender, and Sexuality Studies, American Studies, and Political Science at Yale University. She studies the politics of race, class, gender, and sexuality in the context of intersectional societal inequality, and the representation of those who are marginalized in multiple overlapping ways.

#2961

Jolande Sap

#94008

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Johanna Catharina Maria "Jolande" Sap is a former Dutch politician and former educator and civil servant. A member of GroenLinks , she replaced Wijnand Duyvendak as a member of the House of Representatives on 3 September 2008, after his resignation. She had temporarily been replacing Mariko Peters from the previous day who was on parental leave. From 16 December 2010 to 5 October 2012 she was party leader as well as parliamentary leader in the House of Representatives, replacing Femke Halsema who announced her retirement from politics as of that date.

#2962

Nanguyalai Tarzi

Nanguyalai Tarzi

#103275

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Nanguyalai Tarzi – was a high-ranking Afghan diplomat who was the Afghan Ambassador to Switzerland and Permanent Representative to the United Nations office and other international organisations in Geneva. Tarzi has been the Ambassador of Afghanistan to India, and before that he was Permanent Representative to United Nations at Geneva and Afghan Ambassador to Switzerland, Ambassador of Afghanistan to Pakistan and Director of the United Nations Information Centres in Tehran, Iran. From 1980s to 1990s, Tarzi was Permanent Observer of Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to the United Nations, ...

#2963

Holger Henke

#84941

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Holger W. Henke Education Holger Henke attended the Geschwister-Scholl-Institute for Political Science at the University of Munich, where he earned a Magister Artium in 1987. He subsequently emigrated and lived for seven years in Jamaica. In 1996 he earned a Ph.D. in Government at the University of the West Indies with a dissertation about the foreign relations of that country between 1972 and 1989.

#2964

Kelley Lee

#131842

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Kelley Lee is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Global Health Governance and Professor of Global Public Health in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University. She has studied the impact of globalisation on public health, with a particular focus on the tobacco industry. During the COVID-19 pandemic Lee initiated and led the Pandemics and Borders Project to understand effective ways to mitigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2 through the effective use of travel measures.

#2965

D. Craig Mckie

#158317

Overall Influence

#2966

Emilia Justyna Powell

Emilia Justyna Powell

#115450

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (47 years)

Emilia Justyna Powell is a Polish-American political scientist. She is Professor of Political Science and Concurrent Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame and is known for her expertise on international dispute resolution, the Islamic legal tradition, Islamic international law, and Islamic constitutionalism.

#2967

Eric D. Newsom

#68821

Overall Influence

Eric David Newsom is an American diplomat and State Department official. Biography Eric D. Newsom was born in Oklahoma and raised in Modesto, California. He graduated from Modesto High School in 1961. After high school, he attended the University of California, Berkeley, receiving a B.A. in History in 1965, and an M.A. in Modern European History in 1967.

#2968

Laila Akhmetova

Laila Akhmetova

#98496

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Laila Seysembekovna Akhmetova is a Kazakh doctor of historical sciences, professor of politology of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, writer and research of participants in the World War II. Current activity Akhmetova is the Director of UNESCO centre of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University.

#2969

Kim Beazley Sr.

#105430

Overall Influence

1917 - 2007 (90 years)

Kim Edward Beazley was an Australian politician who served as a member of the House of Representatives from 1945 to 1977, representing the Labor Party. He was Minister for Education in the Whitlam government from 1972 to 1975.

#2970

Don Nakanishi

#94461

Overall Influence

1949 - 2016 (67 years)

Don Nakanishi was a professor and director of the Asian American Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles. Nakanishi is known for establishing Asian American Studies as a "viable and relevant field of scholarship."

#2971

Alan S. Gerber

#158983

Overall Influence

#2972

Jens Hainmueller

#159043

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

#2973

Mohammad Bagher Nobakht

#122432

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Mohammad Bagher Nobakht Haghighi is an Iranian politician and economist. He was Hassan Rouhani's advisor for Supervision and Strategic Affairs and also was the Head of Plan and Budget Organization from 2016 to 2021. He was Spokesman of the Government from 2013 to 2018. He is also the former Head of Management and Planning Organization and secretary-general of the Moderation and Development Party.

#2974

Jeremy Shapiro

#64378

Overall Influence

Jeremy Shapiro is a research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Previously he was special advisor to the assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia at the U.S. Department of State. Prior to his appointment he was director of research at the "Center on the United States and Europe" at the Brookings Institution. His expertise is in the fields of Civil-military relations, Europe, France, military operations, national security and transatlantic diplomacy.

#2975

George A. Papandreou

#159611

Overall Influence

#2976

Virginia Gray

#155173

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Virginia Gray is an American political scientist, currently the Robert Watson Winston Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She studies public policy and interest groups with a particular focus on U.S. state politics. Her work on policy diffusion, which concerns how innovation in policies within one region can lead to adoptions of that policy by other regions, has been cited as foundational in developing that research topic.

#2977

Jessica Valenti

Jessica Valenti

#67966

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (46 years)

Jessica Valenti is an American feminist writer. She was the co-founder of the blog Feministing, which she wrote for from 2004 to 2011. Valenti is the author of five books: Full Frontal Feminism , He's a Stud, She's a Slut , The Purity Myth , Why Have Kids? , and Sex Object: A Memoir . She also co-edited the books Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape , and Believe Me: How Trusting Women Can Change the World . Between 2014 and 2018, Valenti was a columnist for The Guardian. She currently runs the Abortion, Every Day newsletter on Substack. The Washington Post d...

#2978

Cathy Schneider

#111650

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Cathy Lisa Schneider is an American author and professor of urban politics, comparative social movements, and criminal justice. She is a professor at the American University School of International Service.

#2979

Richard R. Lau

#160323

Overall Influence

#2980

Per Lægreid

#160340

Overall Influence

#2981

Jan Teorell

#160364

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

#2982

Denis Osborne

#67662

Overall Influence

1932 - 2014 (82 years)

Denis Gordon Osborne was a British diplomat and academic. Early life Osborne was educated at Dr Challoner's Grammar School in Amersham and University College, Durham, where he graduated with a first-class degree in Physics in 1953. He completed a PhD at the same institution.

#2983

Mirjam Kuenkler

#108113

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (47 years)

Mirjam Künkler, teaches Middle Eastern Politics at Princeton University. Kuenkler's expertise is in Iranian and Indonesian politics. Künkler has published widely on religion-state relations, law, party politics, social movements, and female Islamic authority in Iran and Indonesia. She is the principal-investigator of the "Iran Data Portal" funded by the Social Science Research Council , and the co-convener of the Oxford-Princeton research cluster on "Traditional authority and transnational religious networks in contemporary Shi‘ism.” She is a fellow of the “Women Creating Change” Project on G...

#2984

Jon Western

#100648

Overall Influence

1963 - 2022 (59 years)

Jon Western was an American political scientist who was the Carol Hoffmann Collins '63 Professor of International Relations and Five College Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College and the Five Colleges. He served as Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty at Mount Holyoke from 2016 to 2020. He received his B.A. in Political Science and Russian Area Studies from Macalester College, his M.P.P. from the University of Michigan, and his Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.

#2985

John S. Gregory

#73356

Overall Influence

1923 - 2021 (98 years)

John Stradbroke Gregory , known as Jack and generally publishing as J.S. Gregory, was an Australian professor of Chinese history noted for his biography on Chiang Kai-shek and British involvement in the Taiping Rebellion. Born in Melbourne, he taught at Melbourne High School from 1946 to 1950 and again in 1952 before pursuing a PhD at SOAS University of London. After beginning to teach at Melbourne University most of his professional life was spent at La Trobe University. He gave the 1984 Morrison Lecture on "The Chinese and their Revolutions" and contributed the George Ernest Morrison entry...

#2986

Michael N. Nagler

#78928

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Michael N. Nagler is an American academic, nonviolence educator, mentor, meditator, and peace activist. Life Nagler is professor emeritus of Classics and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, where he founded the Peace and Conflict Studies Program and taught upper-division courses on nonviolence, meditation and a seminar on the meaning of life. Nagler also participated in the Free Speech Movement. He is President of the Metta Center for Nonviolence and author of The Search for a Nonviolent Future, The Nonviolence Handbook, and The Third Harmony: Nonviolence and the New Story of Human Nature ...

#2987

Bas de Gaay Fortman

#90869

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Bastiaan "Bas" de Gaay Fortman is a retired Dutch politician and diplomat of the Political Party of Radicals and later the GreenLeft party and economist. Career before politics After attending public elementary education, he attended the Christian Gymnasium in the Hague, specialising in sciences. After graduating in 1956 he studied law and economics at the Free University of Amsterdam, receiving his Master of Law, and Doctorandus in Economy in 1963 cum laude. In the last four years of his study he taught Civil Law, Commercial Law and Political Economics. Following graduation he became a fellow at the Social Faculty of the Free University, and wrote his dissertation in Economics.

#2988

Kennan Ferguson

#126170

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Kennan Ferguson is an American political theorist who writes on contemporary issues concerning pluralism and the quotidian. He is the Director of The Center for 21st Century Studies at The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and co-editor of the academic political philosophy journal Theory and Event.

#2989

Hardy Hanappi

#46828

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Hardy Hanappi , son of Gerhard Hanappi, is a European political economist. He is ad personam Jean Monnet Chair for Political Economy of European Integration and professor at the Institute of Statistics and Mathematical Methods in Economics of the TU Wien.

#2990

John Frederick Humphrey

#161857

Overall Influence

#2991

Frank Vandenbroucke

#110200

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Frank Ignace Georgette Vandenbroucke is a Belgian-Flemish academic and politician of Vooruit who has been serving as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Health and Social Affairs in the government of Prime Minister Alexander De Croo since 2020.

#2992

Michelle Dion

#140355

Overall Influence

Michelle Dion is a political scientist, currently a professor in the department of political science and the Senator William McMaster Chair in Gender and Methodology at McMaster University, as well as the founding director of McMaster University's Centre for Research in Empirical Social Sciences. Dion studies the political economy of Latin America, the history of social welfare policies, political methodology, and comparative political behaviour with a focus on attitudes, gender, and sexuality in politics.

#2993

Chris Oynes

#123161

Overall Influence

1947 - 2017 (70 years)

Chris Craig Oynes was an American lawyer and federal government administrator. Oynes was born in Anaheim, California to Christian and Lorraine Oynes. Oynes received a BA degree in political science from California State University at Fullerton, and he received a JD degree from George Washington University.

#2994

Peter Douwe Van Der Meer

#162164

Overall Influence

#2995

Florence Gaub

#110249

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (47 years)

Florence Gaub is a Franco-German researcher, security expert and futurist who focuses on foresight based policy formation for international relations and security policy. She is director of the research division at the NATO Defense College . She worked as deputy director at the European Union Institute for Security Studies in Paris from February 2018 until May 2022, worked as foresight advisor at the General Secretariat of the Council and is Visiting Professor at the College of Europe, member of the WEF Global Future Council on the Future of Complex Risks as well as founder and president of ...

#2996

Chrissie Mughogho

#56887

Overall Influence

Dr. Chrissie Chawanje-Mughogho is a Malawian former Ambassador of Malawi to India, Bangladesh, Angola, and Zambia She is a professor by training who rose up the education administration ranks at the University of Malawi. There she served as the first female dean of the faculty of Sciences at the University of Malawi.

#2997

Miguel Relvas

#122975

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Miguel Fernando Cassola de Miranda Relvas is a Portuguese politician and former Secretary General of the Social Democratic Party. He was a deputy for more than 20 years, served as Secretary of State for Local Administration during the XV Constitutional Government of Portugal and Deputy Minister of Parliamentary Affairs during the XIX Constitutional Government of Portugal.

#2998

František Šebej

#111513

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

František Šebej is a Slovak politician and academic. He was member of the National Council of Slovakia between 1998 and 2002 and once more from 2010 until 2018. Between 1990 and 1992 he was member of the House of the Nation of the Federal Assembly of Czechoslovakia.

#2999

Maurizio Ferrera

#162566

Overall Influence

#3000

José Woldenberg

#121864

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Isaac José Woldenberg Karakowski is a Mexican political scientist and sociologist who served as the first president of the Federal Electoral Institute and currently works as director of Nexos magazine.

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