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 female people in Sociology,

#701

Bonita H. Valien

#65466

Overall Influence

1912 - 2011 (99 years)

Bonita H. Valien was an African-American sociologist. She was an associate professor of sociology at Fisk University, a historically black university in Nashville, Tennessee, and the author of several books about desegregation in the Southern United States.

#702

Isabelle Dussauge

#147297

Overall Influence

Isabelle Dussauge is a science, technology and society researcher at the Department of History of Science and Ideas, Uppsala University, Sweden and former assistant professor at the Department of Thematic Studies , Linköping University, Sweden. She is also the co-founder, with Anelis Kaiser, of The NeuroGenderings Network, and acted as guest editor, again with Kaiser on the journal Neuroethics.

#703

Neda Maghbouleh

#103716

Overall Influence

Neda Maghbouleh is an American sociologist, scholar, writer, author, and educator. She is the Canada Research Chair in Migration, Race, and Identity and associate professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto Mississauga.

#704

Shiphra Ginsburg

#109962

Overall Influence

Shiphra Rachel Ginsburg is a Canadian physician-scientist. In 2019, Ginsburg was appointed a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Medical Education Research at the University of Toronto. Early life and education Ginsburg completed her Bachelor of Arts degree at Queen's University at Kingston and her Medicinæ Doctorem et Chirurgiæ Magistrum at McGill University. Following this, she enrolled at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education for her Master of Education degree before leaving North America for her PhD at Maastricht University.

#705

Alphia Possamai-Inesedy

#178813

Overall Influence

Alphia Possamai-Inesedy is an Australian sociologist who is Director of the Sydney City Campus at the University of Western Sydney. She is the Vice President of the Australian Sociological Association.

#706

Anne Briar Smith

#165679

Overall Influence

1940 - 2016 (76 years)

Anne Briar Smith was a New Zealand professor at the University of Otago, and was a pioneering children's rights researcher. Early life and education Smith was born on 13 August 1940 in Porthcawl, Wales, to Dora and Geoff Riddall. Her father worked for the Iraq Petroleum Company, and when that necessitated the family move to Syria, Smith boarded at the Welsh Girls' School in England, aged nine. The family moved to New Zealand in 1954, and Smith attended Te Aroha College, where she was dux in both 1956 and 1957.

#707

Margarita María Birriel Salcedo

#138536

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Margarita M. Birriel Salcedo is a tenured professor in the Department of Modern and American History at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Granada. She is an expert in women's history and women's studies.

#708

Celeste Watkins-Hayes

#99604

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Celeste Watkins-Hayes is a public policy scholar and interim dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy of the University of Michigan. Career Celeste Watkins-Hayes is the Interim Dean and the founding director of the Center for Racial Justice at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. She holds a University Professorship in Diversity and Social Transformation, the Jean Fairfax Collegiate Professorship in the Ford School of Public Policy, and is a professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan.

#709

Chauntelle Tibbals

Chauntelle Tibbals

#133016

Overall Influence

Chauntelle Tibbals is a sociologist from the United States. Her scholarly focus includes studies in gender, sexualities, work and organizations, media and new media, popular culture, and qualitative research methods.

#710

Jane Freedman

#117066

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Jane Freedman is a British–French sociologist and international relations scholar. She is known for her research on issues relating to gender, violence, conflict and migration, including sexual and gender-based violence in armed conflicts and against migrants and refugees. Her research has focused e.g. on violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the refugees of the Syrian Civil War. She "examines women's experiences of forced migration, the insecurities they face and the obstacles that exist to providing full protection of women."

#711

Ann R. Miller

#138968

Overall Influence

1921 - 2006 (85 years)

Ann Ratner Miller was an American sociologist and demographer in the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, described as "a pioneer in the study of human migration and patterns of labor force participation," "part of the first generation of demographers that assembled and analyzed census data to undertake the first systematic study of internal migration within the United States."

#712

June Purvis

#15226

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

June Purvis is an emeritus professor of women's and gender history at the University of Portsmouth. From 2014-18, Purvis was Chair of the Women’s History Network UK and from 2015-20 Treasurer of the International Federation for Research in Women’s History. She organized at the University of Portsmouth on 31st August–1st September 2018 the Women's History Network Annual conference on the Campaigns for Women’s Suffrage: National and International Perspectives. She edits the journal Women's History Review.

#713

Nancy Hazel

#76839

Overall Influence

Nancy Hazel was a Research Fellow with the School of Social Work at the University of Kent. In 1974, Hazel was part of a working group from the Council of Europe that published a report on child placement. The following year, she developed what became known as the Kent Family Placement Project , the forerunner of all modern foster care across the United Kingdom.

#714

Rachel Robinson

Rachel Robinson

#7016

Overall Influence

1922 - Present (102 years)

Rachel Annetta Robinson is an American former professor and registered nurse. She is the widow of professional baseball player Jackie Robinson. After her husband's death, she founded the Jackie Robinson Foundation.

#715

Ann Buchanan

#172500

Overall Influence

1941 - 2022 (81 years)

Ann Hermione Buchanan, MBE, FASC was a British researcher, author and academic. She was Senior Research Associate in the Department of Social Policy and Intervention and Professor Emeritus of Social Work at Oxford University. She was also a Supernumerary Fellow of St. Hilda's College since 1994.

#716

Marla F. Frederick

#89614

Overall Influence

Marla Faye Frederick is an American ethnographer and scholar, with focus on African-American religious experience. She is currently the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Religion and Culture at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. Her work addresses a range of topics including race, gender, religion and media studies.

#717

Kitty Calavita

#171075

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Kitty C. Calavita is an American criminologist, focusing in sociology of law, criminology, immigration, criminal justice and inequality, currently the Chancellor's Professor Emerita at University of California, Irvine and an Elected Fellow of the American Political and Social Science Society.

#718

Carolyn Bohach

#167788

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Carolyn Hovde Bohach is an American food scientist, currently University Distinguished Professor at Washington State University. Her research has focused on enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli which include the infamous O157:H7 serotype.

#719

Nísia Trindade

#100367

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Nísia Trindade Lima is a Brazilian social scientist, sociologist, researcher and university professor who has been serving as Minister of Health of Brazil since 2023. She served as chairwoman of Oswaldo Cruz Foundation from 2017 to 2023.

#720

Sarah Colvin

#174695

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Sarah Jean Colvin is a British scholar of German, literary theory, and gender studies. Since 2014, she has been Schröder Professor of German at the University of Cambridge. She previously held the Eudo C. Mason Chair of German at the University of Edinburgh , and was Professor in Study of Contemporary Germany at the University of Birmingham , then Professor of German at the University of Warwick .

#721

Elizabeth Bernstein

#150221

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Elizabeth Bernstein is an American sociologist who is noted for her studies that focus on women, gender, and sexuality. She is also a professor at Columbia University's Barnard College. Education Bernstein completed her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2001.

#722

Yvonne Haddad

#38335

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad is Professor of the History of Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations at the Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim–Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. Her interests and focus include contemporary Islam; intellectual, social and political history in the Arab world; Islam in the West; Quranic Exegesis; and gender and Islam. Haddad's current research focuses on Muslims in the West and on Islamic Revolutionary Movements. She has published extensively in the field of Islamic studies.

#723

Payal Arora

#172692

Overall Influence

Payal Arora is an Indian anthropologist, full Professor and Chair in Technology, Values, and Global Media Cultures at Erasmus University Rotterdam, author and consultant. She is the founder of CatalystLab, an organization that connects academia, business and the public on social issues. Her work focuses on internet usage in the Global South, specifically on digital cultures, inequality and data governance.

#724

Cindy Patton

#54229

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Cindy Patton is an American sociologist and historian specializing in the history of the AIDS epidemic. A former faculty member at Temple University and Emory University, she currently teaches at Simon Fraser University, where she held the Canada Research Chair in Community, Culture, and Health from 2003 to 2014. Her work has appeared in Criticism, the Feminist Review, and the International Review of Qualitative Research, and she co-edited a special edition of Cultural Studies on French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu.

#725

Carolyn Cannuscio

#177802

Overall Influence

Carolyn Cannuscio is an American epidemiologist who is an associate professor at the Perelman School of Medicine. She serves as Director of Research for the Center for Public Health Initiatives. Cannuscio works to improve public health with a specific focus on disadvantaged urban populations.

#726

Marian Baird

#135792

Overall Influence

Marian Pam Baird is an Australian academic researcher, Professor of Gender and Employment Relations and Head of the Discipline of Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney, and a member of the Australian Fair Work Commission. She is also Foundation Director, Women and Work Research Group. Her research focuses on all aspects of women in the workforce over their lifespan.

#727

Chris Bourg

#129618

Overall Influence

Chris Bourg is an American librarian, sociologist and former officer of the United States Army. She has been the director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries since 2015. Career and education Bourg graduated with a B.A. from Duke University and a M.A. from the University of Maryland. She went on to study sociology at Stanford University where she completed an M.A. and PhD. Her doctoral thesis titled Gender mistakes and inequality was supervised by Cecilia L. Ridgeway.

#728

Kum-Kum Bhavnani

#176541

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Kum-Kum Bhavnani is an American university professor, filmmaker, and author. As of 2018, she is a Professor of Sociology and Distinguished Professor with Feminist Studies and Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she is Chair of the interdisciplinary program in Women, Culture, Development. She served as the Chair of the University of California Academic Senate.

#729

Laura Wexler

#175501

Overall Influence

Laura Wexler is Professor of American Studies, Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and co-chair of the Women's Faculty Forum at Yale University. An American feminist theorist her academic concerns are in the disciplines of women's studies and visual culture.

#730

Virginia Burrus

#149701

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Virginia Burrus is an American scholar of Late Antiquity and expert on gender, sexuality and religion. She is currently the Bishop W. Earl Ledden Professor of Religion and director of graduate studies at Syracuse University.

#731

Tal Dekel

#177560

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Tal Dekel is an art historian, curator and academic. Her work deals with modern and contemporary art in Israel and around the world. Her research focuses on issues of visual culture, analyzing its interrelations with race, class, gender, sexuality and nationality, while using feminist theories and transnationalism. Her recent research revolves around case studies of women immigrants from the Former Soviet Union, Ethiopia and the Philippines in Israel.

#732

Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder

#167922

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder is an Israeli-Arab sociologist, anthropologist, and feminist activist with a specialty in gender studies. She is the first Bedouin woman in Israel to receive a doctorate, and to be promoted to Associate Professor. In June 2021, she was appointed Vice-President for Diversity and Inclusion at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

#733

Hande Eslen-Ziya

#115569

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Hande Eslen-Ziya is a Turkish-born, Norway-based sociologist and psychologist. She is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Populism, Anti-Gender and Democracy Research Group at the University of Stavanger in Norway. She has an established interest in gender and social inequalities, transnational organizations and social activism, and has a substantial portfolio of research in this field. Her research has been published in Gender, Work and Organisation, Emotion, Space and Society, Social Movement Studies, European Journal of Women’s Studies, Culture, Health and Sexuality, Leadership, Men and Masculinities, and Social Politics, as well as in other internationally recognized journals.

#734

Lauren Krivo

#183806

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Lauren J. Krivo is an American sociologist who is professor of sociology at Rutgers University, where she is also an affiliated professor in the Program in Criminal Justice. She is also the director of graduate studies in Rutgers' sociology department. She is known for her work on residential segregation and disadvantage as they relate to race and crime in the United States. She co-founded the Racial Democracy, Crime, and Justice Network, a national network of scholars dedicated to researching race, crime, and justice, along with her longtime collaborator Ruth D. Peterson.

#735

Pamela Anne Quiroz

#157574

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Pamela Anne Quiroz is an American sociologist. She is executive director of Inter University Program on Latino Research and director of Center for Mexican American Studies and professor of sociology, University of Houston.

#736

Sonajharia Minz

#25629

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Sonajharia Minz is an academician, trained in Mathematics and Computer Science, and engages with adivasi issues. She is the second tribeswoman hailing from Chotanagpur and appointed as a Vice-Chancellor in Sido Kanhu Murmu University, Dumka.

#737

Maureen Baker

#185162

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Maureen Baker is a Canadian–New Zealand sociologist and an emeritus professor of the University of Auckland. She has been a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi since 2009. Baker's work focused on children, families and gender.

#738

Sara Goldrick-Rab

Sara Goldrick-Rab

#55907

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (47 years)

Sara Youcha Goldrick-Rab is an American professor, sociologist, and author. Goldrick-Rab was most recently the Professor of Sociology and Medicine at Temple University until she resigned in August 2022, the Founding Director of The Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice, the founder and Board Secretary of Believe in Students, and the Chief Strategy Officer for Emergency Aid of Edquity. A sociologist of higher education, Goldrick-Rab's research focuses on policies that aim to reduce socioeconomic and racial inequalities. She received the American Educational Research Association Early...

#739

Pumla Dineo Gqola

#102302

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Pumla Dineo Gqola is a South African academic, writer, and gender activist, best known for her 2015 book Rape: A South African Nightmare, which won the 2016 Alan Paton Award. She is a professor of literature at Nelson Mandela University, where she holds the South African Research Chair in African Feminist Imaginations.

#740

Susan Lynn Hefle

#95869

Overall Influence

1959 - 2006 (47 years)

Susan Lynn Hefle was an American food scientist who specialized in food allergens, specifically their detection and safety. Hefle was also a cyclist and a cyclist judge. Early life Hefle was born in Milwaukee, WI. Hefle's father was Louis Hefle. Hefle's mother was Nancy Hefle.

#741

Susan Cayleff

#122506

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Susan Cayleff is an American academic and emeritus professor at San Diego State University, having taught there from 1987 to 2020. She was one the inaugural members of the National Women's Studies Association Lesbian Caucus and served on the organization's Coordinating Council between 1977 and 1979. She founded the Women's History Seminar Series at the University of Texas Medical Branch, in Galveston, Texas; the Graduate Women's Scholars of Southern California in 1989; and was a co-founder of the SafeZones program at San Diego State University.

#742

Beverly Wright

#107306

Overall Influence

Beverly Wright is an American environmental justice scholar and the founder of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice at Dillard University. Her research considers the environmental and health inequalities along the Mississippi River Chemical Corridor. Her awards and honours include the Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Justice Achievement Award.

#743

Karen F. Parker

#114718

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Karen Faye Parker is an American sociologist and criminologist known for her research on urban violence. She is a professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Delaware, where she has worked since 2007. She has also been a research associate at the University of Michigan's National Poverty Center since 2007, and was formerly a professor at the University of Florida before joining the faculty of the University of Delaware.

#744

Signithia Fordham

#59614

Overall Influence

Signithia Fordham is a prominent Anthropologist who studies how race influences Black students in the classroom. She began her career working with John Ogbu on their research "Acting White" and has done similar research since. Most of her research is done in the DC area, which she gives the pseudonym Capital High.

#745

Laura Vaughan

#176138

Overall Influence

Laura Vaughan is professor of urban form and society at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. In 2018 she appeared on BBC Radio 4's Thinking Aloud to discuss her book Mapping Society: The Spatial Dimensions of Social Cartography.

#746

Laura Briggs

#171766

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Laura Briggs is a feminist critic and historian of reproductive politics and US empire. She works on transnational and transracial adoption and the relationship between race, sex, gender, and US imperialism. Her 2012 book Somebody's Children: The Politics of Transracial and Transnational Adoption won the James A. Rawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians for best book on the history of US race relations and has been featured on numerous college syllabi in the US and Canada. Briggs serves as professor and chair of the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at the Universit...

#747

Psyche Williams-Forson

#174102

Overall Influence

Psyche Williams-Forson is an American scholar and writer from Virginia. She is currently the associate professor and chair of American Studies at the University of Maryland. Education Williams-Forson, who is African-American, holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Maryland , which are also the fields and institutions related to her Master's work in . Additionally, she completed a certificate in Women's Studies . In 1997, she received her bachelor's degree in English and African-American Studies.

#748

Leith Mullings

#51709

Overall Influence

1945 - 2020 (75 years)

Leith Patricia Mullings was a Jamaican-born author, anthropologist and professor. She was president of the American Anthropological Association from 2011–2013, and was a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Mullings was involved in organizing for progressive social justice, racial equality and economic justice as one of the founding members of the Black Radical Congress and in her role as President of the AAA. Under her leadership, the American Anthropological Association took up the issue of academic labor rights.

#749

Martha Copp

#98593

Overall Influence

Martha Copp is an American sociologist. She is a professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at East Tennessee State University . She is known for her work on symbolic interactionism, emotion management theory, and on teaching fieldwork to students.

#750

Pat Gozemba

#180084

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Patricia Andrea Gozemba is an American academic and activist. She grew up in Massachusetts and was involved in the political movements of the 1960s and 1970s, including the Civil Rights Movement, the Women's Liberation Movement and protests against the Vietnam War.

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