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

Gender

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Sociology,

#651

R. Indira

#75280

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Ramarao Indira is an Indian sociologist who lives in Mysore. In her University career spanning 42 years, she has held such positions as Chair of the Department of Sociology, Director of the International Centre and Honorary Director of the Centre for Women's Studies at the University of Mysore.

#652

Haleh Esfandiari

#19010

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Haleh Esfandiari is an Iranian-American academic and former Director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. Her areas of expertise include Middle Eastern women's issues, contemporary Iranian intellectual currents and politics, and democratic developments in the Middle East. She was detained in solitary confinement at Evin Prison in Tehran, Iran for more than 110 days from May 8 to August 21, 2007.

#653

Bonita Lawrence

#43854

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Bonita Lawrence is a Canadian writer, scholar, and professor in the Department of Equity Studies at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her work focuses on issues related to Indigenous identity and governance, equity, and racism in Canada. She is also a traditional singer at political rallies, social events, and prisons in the Toronto and Kingston areas.

#654

Lorna Marsden

#92909

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Lorna Marsden, is a Canadian sociologist, academic administrator, and former politician. She is the former President and Vice-Chancellor of both Wilfrid Laurier University and York University, and a former member of the Senate of Canada.

#655

LinDa Saphan

#169839

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Linda Saphan is a Cambodian artist and social anthropologist. Born in Phnom Penh, she grew up in Canada and graduated in France. She has supported women artists from Cambodia, co-organizing the first Visual Arts Open festival celebrating Cambodian artists in 2005. Her recent art work had included textiles and embroidery. As an academic, she is currently assistant professor of sociology at Paris Nanterre University.

#656

Marjorie Zatz

#174439

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Marjorie Sue Zatz is an American sociologist and professor of sociology at the University of California, Merced, where she is also the Vice Provost and Graduate Dean. Education and career Zatz received her B.A. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1977, where she majored in sociology and minored in Latin American studies. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from Indiana University, Bloomington in 1979 and 1982, respectively. Her Ph.D. minor was Latin American studies. She joined the faculty of Arizona State University in 1982 as an assistant professor. On July 16, 2012, s...

#657

Beth Richie

#119478

Overall Influence

Beth E. Richie is a professor of African American Studies, Sociology, Gender and Women's Studies, and Criminology, Law, and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago where she currently serves as head of the Criminology, Law, and Justice Department. From 2010 to 2016, Richie served as the director of the UIC Institute of Research on Race and Public Policy. In 2014, she was named a senior adviser to the National Football League Players Association Commission on domestic violence and sexual assault. Of her most notable awards, Richie has been awarded the Audre Lorde Legacy Award from th...

#658

Larissa Adler Lomnitz

#40761

Overall Influence

1932 - 2019 (87 years)

Larissa Adler Lomnitz was a French-born Chilean-Mexican social anthropologist, researcher, professor, and academic. After living in France, Colombia, and Israel, she received Chilean nationality by marriage and Mexican nationality by residence. She conducted research and studies regarding the way in which marginalized classes survive in Latin America. She pioneered the study of social networks and the study of the importance of trust for the economy and politics. Her first study in this regard focused on the exchange of favors in the Chilean middle class. Lomnitz completed her doctoral thesis about the importance of exchanging favors and confidence in the informal economy in Mexico City.

#659

Berit Brandth

#166185

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Berit Brandth is a Norwegian sociologist and gender researcher. Biography Brandth is a graduate of Bates College in the US and the University of Trondheim , where she took a major in 1977. She is a professor of sociology at NTNU and a research advisor at the Norwegian Center for Rural Research. She has focused on both masculinity and femininity, with perspectives from work, technology, media and organization. One of Brandth's research themes is gender in agriculture, in relation to farm tourism and management in agricultural organizations. She has also researched the development and use of the maternity/paternity leave of absence, with particular emphasis on fathers' rights.

#660

Jennie E. Brand

#149256

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Jennie E. Brand is an American sociologist and social statistician. She studies stratification, social inequality, education, social demography, disruptive events, and quantitative methods, including causal inference. Brand is currently Professor of Sociology and Statistics at the University of California, Los Angeles , where she directs the California Center for Population Research and co-directs the Center for Social Statistics.

#661

Alison Phipps

#120579

Overall Influence

Alison Phipps is a British political sociologist, gender studies scholar and feminist theorist, who is a professor of sociology at Newcastle University's School of Geography, Politics and Sociology. Career Phipps was formerly director and professor of gender studies at the University of Sussex. She was Chair of the Feminist and Women's Studies Association of the UK and Ireland from 2009 to 2012 and was one of the co-founders of Universities Against Gender-Based Violence. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She received her PhD from Cambridge University, her MA and BA from M...

#662

Ai Xiaoming

#116212

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Ai Xiaoming is a Chinese documentary filmmaker and political activist. She is also a scholar of women's and public issues, and former professor at Sun Yat-sen University. Ai was born in Wuhan in 1953, and has spent most of her adult life in Beijing and Guangzhou.

#663

Sally Baldwin

#32135

Overall Influence

1940 - 2003 (63 years)

Sally Baldwin was a University of York social sciences professor. Early life and education Baldwin was born Sarah Marie Kilday in Coatbridge, Scotland. At the University of Glasgow she studied English Language and Literature, in which she gained a first class degree. She later moved to the University of York, where she gained a diploma in social administration in 1973. She became part of the University's Social Policy Research Unit , being appointed its director in 1987.

#664

Gilda Ochoa

#108195

Overall Influence

Gilda Laura Ochoa is an American sociologist and professor. She is Professor of Chicana/o-Latina/o studies at Pomona College in the United States, and the author of Academic Profiling: Latinos, Asian Americans, and the Achievement Gap.

#665

Joyce Boye

#51162

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Joyce Boye is a former federal food research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada with a specialty in value-added food processing, food safety and food quality. She has expertise on plant proteins and their importance in helping to improve human health and nutrition. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations appointed Boye to be a Special Ambassador for North America for the 2016 International Year of Pulses.

#666

Luana Ross

#138570

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Luana K. Ross (born 1949) is a Native American sociologist of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, located at Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Montana in 1979, her master’s degree from Portland State University, and her doctorate in sociology from the University of Oregon in 1992, before serving as faculty at the University of California, Davis and University of California, Berkeley. Since 1999 she has been a faculty member for the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington. She has also been an Adjunct Professor in American Indian Studies at the University of Washington since 1999.

#667

Suzanna Danuta Walters

#151885

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Suzanna Danuta Walters is the director of the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program and professor of sociology at Northeastern University, Boston. She is also the editor-in-chief of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society and the author of several books, including The Tolerance Trap: How God, Genes, and Good Intentions are Sabotaging Gay Equality. She is the author of the op-ed "Why can't we hate men?" in The Washington Post.

#668

Joy G. Dryfoos

#118247

Overall Influence

1925 - 2012 (87 years)

Joy G. Dryfoos was an American sociologist who is credited with the creation of the concept of full-service schools. Early life and education Dryfoos was born to Mr. and Mrs. Gidding in Plainfield, New Jersey, in 1925. She had one brother.

#669

Nancy Kleniewski

#65113

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Nancy Kleniewski is an American sociologist and academic administrator who served as the president of the State University of New York at Oneonta. Career Kleniewski was a sociologist and held administrative posts at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and the State University of New York at Geneseo. She was provost and vice president for academic affairs at Bridgewater State College. From 2008 to 2018, Kleniewski was president of the State University of New York at Oneonta. She was the first female in that role at Oneonta.

#670

Marilyn J. Boxer

#177978

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (94 years)

Marilyn J. Boxer is a historian in the field of women's studies, one of the earliest in that field. She served as chair of the women's studies program at San Diego State University, the first program of its kind in the U.S., and later in various academic and administrative leadership roles there and at San Francisco State University.

#671

Carroll Seron

#139636

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Carroll Seron is an American sociologist and Professor of Criminology, Law & Society at the University of California, Irvine . Her research focuses on legal organizations and professions. She has also studied gender disparities in engineering employment, arguing that they are due to gender bias in stereotypes and engineering culture.

#672

Louise Slade

#146783

Overall Influence

1946 - 2021 (75 years)

Louise Slade was a food scientist known for her work on food polymer science. She was an elected fellow of the Institute of Food Technologists and of the American Association of Cereal Chemists. Education and career Slade was born in South Carolina in 1946 and was a dancer who briefly attended the Juilliard School. She moved on to Barnard College, first interested in botany but dissuaded by the low level of available funding so she instead studied biochemistry, and received her bachelor's degree in 1968. She went on to earn a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1974, and subsequently was a postd...

#673

Kate Pahl

#175764

Overall Influence

Kate Heron Pahl is Professor of Literacies and Head of Education and Social Research Institute at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her work draws on arts and humanities methodologies to co-produce knowledge with community partners and the intersections between arts methodologies and community cohesion. Her publications have drawn on literary theory, New Literacy Studies and social anthropology.

#674

Zandria Robinson

Zandria Robinson

#166887

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (42 years)

Zandria F. Robinson is an American writer and scholar. Her work focuses on popular music, ethnography, and race and culture in the American south. She is the author of two books: This Ain't Chicago: Race, Class, and Regional Identity in the Post-Soul South and Chocolate Cities: The Black Map of American Life . Robinson is an associate professor of African-American studies at Georgetown University.

#675

Emily Agree

#168286

Overall Influence

Emily M. Agree is an American sociologist. She is a professor of sociology in the Departments of Sociology and Population, Family, and Reproductive Health at Johns Hopkins University, and associate director at the Hopkins Population Center.

#676

Katrina Brown

#90982

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (123 years)

Katrina Brown is a Professor of Social Sciences, at the University of Exeter. From 1991–2012, she was a Professor of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia. Education Brown has a BSc from University of Newcastle upon Tyne, an MSc from the University of Reading, and a Ph.D. from the University of Nottingham. Following her Ph.D, she was at the University of East Anglia until 2012 at which point she moved to the University of Exeter.

#677

Lee Robins

#43473

Overall Influence

1922 - 2009 (87 years)

Lee Nelken Robins was an American professor of social science in psychiatry and a leader in psychiatric epidemiology research. She was affiliated with the Washington University in St. Louis for more than 50 years from 1954 until 2007.

#678

Mary Lindenstein Walshok

#139717

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Dr. Mary Lindenstein Walshok RNO1kl is an American educational sociologist. Education B.A. in 1964 Pomona CollegeM.A. in 1967, Indiana UniversityPh.D. in 1969, Indiana University Career She has been on the faculty of the University of California, San Diego since 1972. The focus of her career has been understanding and fostering the growth of local and regional economies throughout the world. She is the Associate Vice Chancellor of Public Programs at UCSD. Until 2021 she also served as the Dean of Extended Studies and as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Sociology. The Department of ...

#679

M. Cristina Alcalde

#157819

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

M. Cristina Alcalde is Vice President for Institutional Diversity and Inclusion at Miami University. Previously, she served as Marie Rich Endowed Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Kentucky, where she was also Associate Dean of Inclusion and Internationalization in the College of Arts and Sciences at the university. There, she was also an affiliate faculty member in the Social Theory, Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies, and Anthropology departments and worked with the Center for Research on Violence Against Women. Her research focuses on exclusion, leadersh...

#680

Constance Kies

#168955

Overall Influence

1934 - 1993 (59 years)

Constance Virginia Kies was an American nutrition scientist and dietitian. Kies worked as a public school teacher for three years before going against the traditional gender norms of her time and completing an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Over the duration of her 30-year career at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Kies researched nutritional biochemistry. She demonstrated relationships between minerals, proteins, and dietary fiber through pioneering human subject research. Her findings led to advancements in human knowledge of copper and protein metabolism. She was honored with the Borden Award and was a fellow of the American College of Nutrition.

#681

Marguerite Ross Barnett

Marguerite Ross Barnett

#71023

Overall Influence

1942 - 1992 (50 years)

Overview Marguerite Ross Barnett was the eighth president of the University of Houston and a former chancellor of the University of Missouri–St. Louis. Barnett was the first African American woman to lead a major American university.

#682

Toni Bruce

#172696

Overall Influence

Toni Bruce is a New Zealand sociology academic, specialising in the sociology of sport. She is currently a full professor at the University of Auckland. She gained her Masters and PhD degrees at the University of Illinois in the USA. She previously worked at the University of New Hampshire University of Canberra and University of Waikato . While teaching at the University of Auckland Bruce participated in many fields of research. Her main topics involve sports media, gender issues, nationalism, race/ethnicity and disability. Bruce is an expert in many different topics including journalism, m...

#683

Marju Lauristin

#112534

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Marju Lauristin is an Estonian politician, and former Member of the European Parliament and Minister of Social Affairs. She is a member of the Social Democratic Party, part of the Party of European Socialists. Lauristin is currently a member of the Tartu city council.

#684

Velma McBride Murry

#171454

Overall Influence

Velma McBride Murry is an American psychologist and sociologist, currently the Lois Autrey Betts Chair in Education and Human Development and Joe B. Wyatt Distinguished University Professor at Vanderbilt University. Her research has largely focused on resilience and protective factors for African-American families, and she has several publications in this area. In addition to her empirical research, she has contributed to several published books and used her experience to create two family-based preventative intervention programs.

#685

Eleanor Bernert Sheldon

#150113

Overall Influence

1920 - 2021 (101 years)

Eleanor Harriet Bernert Sheldon was an American sociologist who was president of the Social Science Research Council from 1972 to 1979, and was one of the key pioneers in the use of social indicators in sociology. In the 1970s, as multinational corporations recognized the need to appoint women to their boards of directors, Sheldon became the first woman to serve on the boards of several major companies, including Citibank, Mobil, Heinz, and Equitable Holdings.

#686

Sheila Kitzinger

Sheila Kitzinger

#19995

Overall Influence

1929 - 2015 (86 years)

Sheila Helena Elizabeth Kitzinger MBE was a British natural childbirth activist and author on childbirth and pregnancy. She wrote more than 20 books and had a worldwide reputation as a passionate and committed advocate for change.

#687

Amélie Quesnel-Vallée

#87925

Overall Influence

Amélie Quesnel-Vallée is a professor with joint appointment in the Departments of Sociology and of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health, as well as Canada Research Chair in Policies and Health Inequalities at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

#688

Virginia Apuzzo

#62683

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Virginia "Ginny" Apuzzo is an American gay rights and AIDS activist. She is a former executive director of the National LGBTQ Task Force. She served as executive deputy of the New York State Consumer Protection Board and as the vice chair of the New York State AIDS Advisory Council. She was also President of the New York State Civil Service Commission and Commissioner of the New York State Department of Civil Service. In 1996, she became the Associate Deputy Secretary of Labor at the United States Department of Labor, and in 1997 she became the Assistant to the President for Management and Administration under the Clinton administration.

#689

Alison Hennegan

#76661

Overall Influence

Alison Hennegan is a lecturer at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity Hall. She is also a prominent campaigner for gay and lesbian rights in the UK and a journalist. Hennegan's academic work focuses on lesbian and gay themes in English literature, particularly in British Modernism. She began writing her PhD thesis, “Literature and the Homosexual Cult, 1890–1920” in Cambridge in 1970, but her heavy involvement in gay activism forced her to put her research on hold. She returned to the academy in the 1980s and has published articles on the lesbian reader, Oscar Wilde and the Symbolist and decadent movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

#690

Maryse Marpsat

#134120

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Maryse Marpsat is a French sociologist and statistician whose work employs methods drawn from sociology and statistics but also mathematics. Her major sociological works concern poverty, inequality and homeless situation. She is a civil servant, administrator of the French National Institute of Statistics and a fellow of the CSU, a French research institute specializing in sociological studies in urban societies.

#691

Jane Pilcher

#171510

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Jane Pilcher SFHEA is a sociologist specialising in names and naming, gender, and ageing. She is an associate lecturer at Nottingham Trent University, having previously held posts at Cardiff University and the University of Leicester.

#692

Victoria Pitts-Taylor

#174849

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Victoria Pitts-Taylor is Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Wesleyan University, Connecticut, and also Professor of Science in Society and Sociology there. She was formerly a professor of sociology at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center, New York, and visiting fellow at the Centre for the Study of Social Difference, Columbia University, New York. Pitts-Taylor is also former co-editor of the journal Women's Studies Quarterly. She has won the Robert K. Merton Book Award from the section on Science, Knowledge and Technology of the American Sociological Association, a...

#693

Jacqueline Hagan

#158147

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Jacqueline Maria Hagan is a Chilean-born American sociologist who has been the Kenan Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since 2017. She is known for her research on immigration from Latin America to the United States, and on the effects of the United States' immigration policies on immigrants. This work has included studies of the social effects of deportations of undocumented immigrants to their home countries, and research on changes in the frequency of different causes of migrant deaths along the Mexico–United States border.

#694

Dorothy Y. Ko

#117636

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Dorothy Ko is a Professor of History and Women's Studies at the Barnard College of Columbia University. She is a historian of early modern China, known for her multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional research. As a historian of early modern China, she has endeavored to engage with the field of modern China studies; as a China scholar, she has always positioned herself within the study of women and gender and applied feminist approaches in her work; as a historian, she has ventured across disciplinary boundaries, into fields that include literature, visual and material culture, science and te...

#695

Angela Dwyer

#113804

Overall Influence

Angela Dwyer is an Australian social scientist and writer. Her specialist area is policing studies, with a particular interest in how lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender young people experience policing.

#696

Dána-Ain Davis

#113180

Overall Influence

Dána-Ain Davis is a professor of urban studies at Queens College, City University of New York and the Director of the Center for the Study of Women and Society. Biography Dána-Ain Davis was born in New York in 1958. She attended the University of Maryland, College Park to study film and communication, and graduated with her BA in 1980. Out of college, Davis worked at The Village Voice, a newspaper company based in New York that also wrote stories of culture and art. Davis also worked at WNYC-TV, a television station during her lifetime. She then ventured into the nonprofit sector working in t...

#697

Farideh Heyat

#90866

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Farideh Heyat is a British-Iranian anthropologist and a writer based in London. She is a retired lecturer of SOAS, University of London and American University of Central Asia in Bishkek. Heyat is the author of numerous articles on women in Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan. She is also the author of the following books: Azeri Women in Transition: Women in Soviet and post-Soviet Azerbaijan and The Land of Forty Tribes.

#698

Yreina Cervantez

#85404

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Yreina Cervantez is an American artist and Chicana activist who is known for her multimedia painting, murals, and printmaking. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, and her work is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Mexican Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum, and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.

#699

Tahu Kukutai

#169159

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Tahu Hera Kukutai is a New Zealand sociology academic; she is Māori, of Ngāti Tīpā, Ngāti Mahanga, Ngāti Kinohaku, Ngāti Ngawaero and Te Aupōuri descent, and as of 2019 is a full professor at the University of Waikato. In 2022 Kukutai was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi.

#700

Patricia Kingori

#159083

Overall Influence

Patricia Kingori is a British Kenyan sociologist who is a professor at the University of Oxford. Her research considers the experiences of frontline health workers around the world. She is particularly interested in misinformation and pseudoscience. In 2015, Kingori was included on the Powerlist.

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