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.

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School

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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Sociology,

#1501

Ketzia Alon

#103550

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Ketzia Alon is an Israeli academic, social activist, Mizrahi feminist, art curator and critic, and owner of Gama Publishing. She is one of the founders of the Ahoti – for Women in Israel movement.

#1502

Ali A. Abdi

#34987

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Ali A. Abdi is a Somali-Canadian sociologist and educationist. Currently, he is a professor of social development education in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, where he previously served as head of department. Before that, he was a professor of International Education and International Development at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, where he also served as the founding co-director of the Centre for Global Citizenship Education and Research . He is past president of the Comparative and International Education Society of Canada .

#1503

Yeshajahu Pomeranz

#131214

Overall Influence

1922 - Present (102 years)

Yeshajahu Pomeranz was an Israeli-American food scientist. Early life and education Pomeranz was born on 28 November 1922 in Poland to Rysia and Dovid Pomeranz. He received bachelor's degrees from the Israel Institute of Technology in chemistry and chemical engineering in 1944 and 1945. He obtained a master's degree in chemical engineering from the University of London, and a doctorate in grain science and milling from Kansas State University.

#1504

Ben M. Anderson

#135643

Overall Influence

#1505

Linda Burton

#100850

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Linda M. Burton is a sociologist who is the dean of Berkeley’s social welfare school. She previously held the title of James B. Duke Professor of Sociology and Director of the Sociology Department’s Undergraduate Honors Program at Duke University. She specializes in family structure, poverty and inequality, and child development.

#1506

Tom Shakespeare

Tom Shakespeare

#17503

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Sir Thomas William Shakespeare, 3rd Baronet, is an English sociologist and bioethicist. He has achondroplasia and uses a wheelchair. Early life and education Son of Sir William Geoffrey Shakespeare, 2nd Baronet, and Susan Mary, daughter of A. Douglas Raffel, of Colombo, Sri Lanka, his grandfather, Sir Geoffrey Shakespeare, was made a baronet following long service as a Member of Parliament and in various senior government roles. While still a student, Tom was featured in a television documentary by Lord Snowdon connected to his 1976 report 'Integrating the Disabled' about his restricted growth, along with his father, a prominent medical practitioner, who was also born with achondroplasia.

#1507

Darnell Hawkins

#91161

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Darnell Felix Hawkins is an American sociologist and criminologist. He is emeritus professor of African-American studies, sociology, and criminal justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is known for his research on racial differences in crime, the ways in which the law is applied differently across races, and violence prevention. This includes research on urban violence and racial profiling.

#1508

Catherine Hakim

#136033

Overall Influence

#1509

Richard Layte

#96501

Overall Influence

Richard Layte is a professor of sociology at Trinity College Dublin, appointed in 2014. Previously he was a research professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin, Ireland, where he coordinated the research programme on health.

#1510

Per-Olof H. Wikström

#85449

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Per-Olof Helge Wikstrӧm is Professor of Ecological and Developmental Criminology at the University of Cambridge, Professorial Fellow of Girton College and Principal Investigator of the Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study , a major ESRC funded longitudinal study of young people in the UK which aims to advance knowledge about crime causation and prevention. His main research interests are developing a unified theory of the causes of crime , testing it empirically and applying it to devising knowledge-based prevention policies. His work is internationally acknowledged, as d...

#1511

Joseph W. Eaton

#61467

Overall Influence

1919 - 2012 (93 years)

Joseph W. Eaton, born Josef Wechsler , was an American sociologist who published widely in the fields of social work, sociology, public health, and public and international affairs. Biography Eaton was born in Nuremberg, Germany, the son of Jakob Wechsler and Flora Wechsler . His father owned a shaving brush factory. When the business failed following the stock market crash, the family moved to Berlin, in 1930. After the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Joseph's parents arranged for him and a younger brother to emigrate to the United States by themselves, with the assistance of the German Jewish Children's Aid program; two older brothers had already left for Palestine.

#1512

Nina Bandelj

#117915

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Nina Bandelj is an economic sociologist, author and academic. She is a Chancellor's Professor in the Department of Sociology, Associate Vice Provost for faculty development, and co-director of the Center for Organizational Research at the University of California, Irvine . She is also a visiting professor at the IEDC-Bled School of Management and a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University.

#1513

Robert Brulle

#48205

Overall Influence

Robert J. Brulle is an American environmental sociologist and professor of sociology and environmental science at Drexel University. He is also an associate professor of public health at the Drexel University School of Public Health. He advocates aggressive political action to address global warming.

#1514

Phillip Bonacich

#136355

Overall Influence

#1515

Heinz-Herbert Noll

#81249

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Heinz-Herbert Noll is a German sociologist. Education Noll studied sociology, economics, social policy and statistics at the Goethe University Frankfurt. After the diploma in sociology he wrote a dissertation at the chair of Wolfgang Zapf at the University of Mannheim and received his philosophers degree in 1981 with a thesis on "Occupational Chances and Working Conditions: A Social Report for the Federal Republic of Germany 1950–1980“ .

#1516

DaShanne Stokes

#76323

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (46 years)

DaShanne Stokes is an author, sociologist, public speaker and pundit. He speaks on politics, culture, and civil rights and is known as a progressive activist. Early life and education DaShanne was born in Racine, Wisconsin in 1978. His mother gave birth to him when she was a teenager. He was raised in Las Vegas by adoptive parents of Lakota heritage, who he believed were his biological parents. In 1996 he began higher education at Boston University. In 1998, after moving to South Dakota, he discovered by accident that he was adopted, and he was not biologically a Native American. Stokes has a B.S.

#1517

Volodymyr Paniotto

Volodymyr Paniotto

#102401

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Volodymyr Illich Paniotto is a Ukrainian sociologist, doctor of philosophical sciences, Director General of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology , and professor at the Sociology Department of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

#1518

Lindsey Doe

#15781

Overall Influence

Lindsey Takara Doe is a sexologist, sex educator, and host of Sexplanations on YouTube. Personal life Lindsey Takara Doe was born in . she had three children. In 2015, when one of her daughters complained about a boy who would not stop pestering her for a date, Doe took the opportunity and published a video addressing such harassment from boys; the video received international attention, spirited debate, and over 76,000 views in ten days.

#1519

Bina D'Costa

#73663

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Bina D'Costa is an Australian-Bangladeshi academic who specializes in conflict and gender studies in South Asia. Career D'Costa was at the Global Justice Center in New York City in 2008. D'Costa was a professor of International Relations at the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs of the Australian National University. She was a visiting scholar at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva from 2012 to 2014. She was a visiting scholar at the Refugee Studies Centre under Department of International Development of University of Oxford from 2011 to 2012. She served as the Asia Rapporteur of Asia-Europe Meeting in 2017.

#1520

Marcel H. Zwietering

#136947

Overall Influence

#1521

Krishan Kumar

#60282

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Krishan Kumar is a British sociologist who is currently William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia. Early life and education Kumar was educated at William Ellis School in London and studied as an undergraduate at St John's College, Cambridge and for a master's degree at the London School of Economics. He then worked as a lecturer at the University of Kent from 1967, where he also studied for a PhD, and had a spell as a producer for the talks and documentaries department of the BBC.

#1522

Sheldon Stryker

#136957

Overall Influence

#1523

Jennifer Berdahl

#83592

Overall Influence

Jennifer Berdahl is a professor in the department of sociology at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, Canada. Prior to that she was a business school professor for 20 years, at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, and at the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia. Berdahl was raised in Eugene, Oregon, Princeton, New Jersey, and Göttingen Germany and studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where she received a Ph.D. in social psychology in 1999.

#1524

Karl Pillemer

#122929

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Karl Andrew Pillemer is an American sociologist and gerontologist who is the Hazel E. Reed Professor of Human Development at Cornell University, and Professor of Gerontology in Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine. His research focuses on intergenerational relations in later life, long-term care for frail and disabled older persons, and social engagement and involvement of older persons. Pillemer is the founder of the Cornell Legacy Project, which since 2004 has collected accounts of the life wisdom of over 2,000 older Americans, and the Cornell Family Reconciliation Project, which researches ...

#1525

Toshio Yamagishi

#137187

Overall Influence

#1526

R. Jay Turner

#96448

Overall Influence

1934 - 2018 (84 years)

R. Jay Turner was a widely cited academic sociologist who uses demographic techniques to research epidemiology. He was a professor of sociology and psychiatry at Vanderbilt University, and he was affiliated with the Center for Research on Health Disparities. He also maintained the title of Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Epidemiology and a Professor of Psychology at Florida State University. While at FSU he was affiliated with the Center for Demography and Population Health.

#1527

Jeffrey Fagan

#55143

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Jeffrey Alan Fagan is the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He is also the director of that institution's Center for Crime, Community and Law, and a professor of epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health.

#1528

Renata Forste

#106374

Overall Influence

Renata Tonks Forste is an American sociologist who specializes in the health and well being of women and children in Latin America. She has served as the chair of the department of sociology at Brigham Young University and has also directed that institutions women's studies program.

#1529

Jason Beckfield

#97281

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Jason Beckfield is an American sociologist. He is the Robert G. Stone Jr. Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. Early life Jason Beckfield was born to Cathy and Albert Beckfield in 1976. He grew up in Joplin, Missouri and graduated from Truman State University. He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from Indiana University, Bloomington.

#1530

Eric Markusen

#79306

Overall Influence

1946 - 2007 (61 years)

Eric Markusen was Professor of Sociology and Social Work at Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall, Minnesota, USA, and Research Director of the Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Copenhagen. He also served as Associate Editor of the two-volume Encyclopedia of Genocide, published in 1999.

#1531

Alek Epstein

#70493

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Alek D. Epstein is a Russian-Israeli sociologist of culture and politics. He divides his time between Jerusalem and Moscow, taking part in a number of academic, educational, social change and civil rights activism projects in both countries. He has published more than 200 manuscripts in various scientific journals and collections and authored more than 20 books on Israel and the Middle East.

#1532

Janet L. Jacobs

#79645

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

For the American former baseball player, see Janet Jacobs. Janet Liebman Jacobs is an American sociologist specializing in gender and religion. Jacobs' research focuses on women, religion, ethnicity, genocide and the social psychology of gender. She has authored seven books, including Hidden Heritage: The Legacy of the Crypto-Jews, for which she won the Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Memorializing the Holocaust: Gender, Genocide and Collective Memory, and The Holocaust Across Generations: Trauma and its Inheritance Among Descendants of Survivor...

#1533

Deborah Lynn Steinberg

#71489

Overall Influence

1961 - 2017 (56 years)

Deborah Lynn Steinberg was a British-based American academic, author, educator and sociologist. She was a Professor of Gender, Culture and Media Studies in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick.

#1534

Lois B. DeFleur

#18514

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Lois B. DeFleur was president of Binghamton University from 1990 to 2010. She came to the university after being provost at the University of Missouri. Before that she had served as a sociology professor at Missouri State University and Washington State University. She has a doctorate in sociology from the University of Illinois. She studied juvenile delinquency in Latin America and has done extensive work in the fields of deviant behavior and occupational socialization.

#1535

S. Duane Bruce

#137819

Overall Influence

#1536

William B. Helmreich

#106533

Overall Influence

1945 - 2020 (75 years)

William Helmreich was a Swiss-born American professor of sociology at the City College of New York Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He was also a published author.

#1537

Wenona Giles

#104782

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Wenona Mary Giles is a professor emerita in the Department of Anthropology at York University. In 2018, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Through the university, Giles helped launch the Borderless Higher Education for Refugees project which allowed people in refugee camps to earn degrees, diplomas and certificates from Moi and Kenyatta Universities in Kenya, and from York University and UBC in Canada.

#1538

Michelle Spring

#86832

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Michelle Stanworth is a Canadian sociologist and writer of mystery fiction, who has published both academic work under her own name and mystery fiction under the pen name Michelle Spring. She is most noted for her 2001 novel In the Midnight Hour, which won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel in 2002.

#1539

Donald Treiman

#137297

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Donald Treiman is an American sociologist, currently the Distinguished Professor Emeritus at University of California, Los Angeles and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#1540

Lori Peek

#116396

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Lori Peek is a professor of Sociology at University of Colorado at Boulder and director of the Natural Hazards Center. Peek has received many awards for her scholarship, her career in teaching, and her service to the discipline of sociology and broader hazards and disaster field. On April 20, 2021 President Joe Biden nominated Peek to be a Member of Board of Directors of the National Institute of Building Sciences, subject to the advice and consent of the Senate.

#1541

Per Åman

#137919

Overall Influence

#1542

Sandra Walklate

#92173

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Sandra Walklate is a British criminologist. She is the Eleanor Rathbone Chair of Sociology at the University of Liverpool and President of the British Society of Criminology. In January 2014, she became the Editor in Chief of The British Journal of Criminology.

#1543

James W. Carey

#13784

Overall Influence

1934 - 2006 (72 years)

James William Carey was an American communication theorist, media critic, and a journalism instructor at the University of Illinois, and later at Columbia University. He was a member of the Peabody Awards Board of Jurors from 1995 to 2002. He died in 2006 at age 71. Carey is credited with developing the ritual view of communication.

#1544

Linsey McGoey

#90268

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (46 years)

Linsey McGoey is a Canadian sociologist and academic based in England. She is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex. She is known for having written about philanthropy in her book No Such Thing as a Free Gift and co-editing the Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies with Matthias Gross. Her next book, The Unknowers: How Elite Ignorance Rules the World, was published in 2019.

#1545

Ian Craib

#54122

Overall Influence

1945 - 2002 (57 years)

Ian Ernest Craib was an English sociologist and psychotherapist. He was educated at Trinity School of John Whitgift, and the South Bank Polytechnic, eventually receiving his doctorate at the Victoria University of Manchester. He went on to join the University of Essex in 1973, eventually rising to the chair of Professor of Sociology. During his time at the University, he gained an international reputation in sociology, and is widely read as a theoretician who ably links sociology and psychoanalysis.

#1546

Eva Lundgren

#103066

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Eva Lundgren is a Norwegian-Swedish sociologist. She is an expert on violence against women and sexual violence, particularly in religious contexts. She is professor emerita of sociology at Uppsala University.

#1547

Adrian Holliday

#64360

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Adrian Holliday is Professor of Applied Linguistics and Intercultural Education at Canterbury Christ Church University. His teaching and research includes intercultural communication and ideology, discourses of culture, the politics of international English language education, English in the world, cultural imperialism, and qualitative research methods.

#1548

El Jones

#68273

Overall Influence

El Jones is a poet, journalist, professor and activist living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She was Halifax's Poet Laureate from 2013 to 2015. Biography She was born in Wales and grew up in Winnipeg. Her book, Live From the Afrikan Resistance! published in 2014 by Roseway, an imprint of Fernwood Publishing, is a collection of poems about resisting white colonialism. In 2015, she was a resident at the International Writing Program at University of Iowa. Her work focuses on social justice issues such as feminism, prison abolition, anti-racism, and decolonization; she wrote in The Washington Postin J...

#1549

Simon Williams

#126874

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Simon J. Williams, FAcSS is a British sociologist. He is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Warwick. Biography Simon Williams completed his doctoral thesis on the sociological dimensions of chronic respiratory illness and disability in 1990 at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London. He then worked as a Research Fellow at the University of Kent in the Centre for Health Services Studies from 1990 to 1992 before moving to a full-time lectureship in Sociology at the University of Warwick in 1992, where he has been ever since, becoming a full Professor of So...

#1550

Matthijs Kalmijn

#138336

Overall Influence

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