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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List of the most influential people in Sociology,

#1601

Jane Menken

#67187

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Jane Menken , née Golubitsky, is an American sociologist and demographer known for her work in sociology in public and international affairs, population studies, social statistics. Menken has published a co-authored book Mathematical Models of Conception and Birth, and is co-editor of Natural Fertility , Teenage Sexuality, Pregnancy, and Childbearing , World Population and U.S. Policy: The Choices Ahead , and Aging in Sub-Saharan Africa . In addition, Menken was a founding member of the editorial board of two academic journals in the demography discipline: Demographic Research and Southern Afr...

#1602

George Dei

#60045

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

George Jerry Sefa Dei is a professor at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. He is known for his anti-racist research, particularly on anti-racist approaches to education. He is also known for his advocacy for African-focused schools in Canada. In 2007, he was installed as the chief of the town of Asokore, Ghana. He was elected as fellows of the Royal Society of Canada in 2017.

#1603

Hilary Graham

#74003

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Hilary Mavis Graham, is a British sociologist and social policy academic, who specialises in public health. Since 2005, she has been Professor of Health Sciences at the University of York. She previously lectured at the University of Bradford, the Open University, Coventry Polytechnic, the University of Warwick, and Lancaster University.

#1604

David E. Smith

#142681

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

#1605

Sikivu Hutchinson

Sikivu Hutchinson

#63080

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Sikivu Hutchinson is an American author, playwright, director, and musician. Her multi-genre work explores feminism, gender justice, racial justice, LGBTQIA+ rights, humanism and atheism. She is the author of Humanists in the Hood: Unapologetically Black, Feminist, and Heretical , White Nights, Black Paradise , Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels , Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars , and Imagining Transit: Race, Gender, and Transportation Politics in Los Angeles . Her plays include "White Nights, Black Paradise", "Rock 'n' Roll Heretic" and "Narcolepsy, Inc.".

#1606

Staughton Lynd

#7993

Overall Influence

1929 - 2022 (93 years)

Staughton Craig Lynd was an American political activist, author, and lawyer. His involvement in social justice causes brought him into contact with some of the nation's most influential activists, including Howard Zinn, Tom Hayden, A. J. Muste, and David Dellinger.

#1607

Riitta Jallinoja

#142757

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Riitta Jallinoja is a Finnish sociologist, who was appointed Finland's first family sociology professor at the University of Helsinki in 2002. She is known, among other things, for studying the role of women, the family and modern life.

#1608

Ira Reiss

#125178

Overall Influence

1925 - Present (99 years)

Ira Leonard Reiss is a sociologist with primary interests in studying the way society impacts sexual attitudes and behaviors and how people respond to those pressures. He also has interests in the study of gender and family, particularly as they relate to sexuality. He attended Syracuse University for his B.S. degree and the Pennsylvania State University for his M. A. and Ph. D. degrees. His major area in graduate school was sociology and his minor areas were cultural anthropology and philosophy. His doctoral course work in sociology and philosophy was done at Columbia University and his Fren...

#1609

John DeLamater

#101959

Overall Influence

1940 - 2017 (77 years)

John Delos DeLamater was an American sociologist and sexologist who taught at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he was the Conway-Bascom Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology.

#1610

Rodrigo Jokisch

#96217

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Rodrigo Jokisch is a German sociologist. Some books Determinants of the Technological Evolution in Europe. Structural Models for a better Understanding of the Process of Industrialization between the 17th and the 19th Century, Technological University of Berlin, 1980 El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Military Struggles and Political Reforms, Rowohlt, 1981 To be a Man. Crisis and Identity of the Male in Modern Society, Rowohlt, 1982 Sociology of Technology, Suhrkamp, 1984 Man and Woman. Coming together, Rowohlt, 1984 fLogic of Distinctions. A Protologic for a Theory of Society, Westdeutscher Verlag, 1996 Methodology of Distinctions.

#1611

Stephanie Moller

#132132

Overall Influence

Stephanie Moller is an American sociologist who is Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Career After receiving her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2003, Moller joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2003 as an assistant professor of sociology. She left the university in 2008 to work in Brand and Advertising Research at Bank of America. Moller returned to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte August 2019. She was named full professor and department chair in 2014. She served as chair until 2019 when she transitioned to the Director of the Public Policy Doctoral Program.

#1612

Cliff Slaughter

#48959

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (96 years)

Cliff Slaughter was a British socialist activist, sociologist and author. His best-known works are Coal is Our Life and Marxism, Ideology and Literature. In 2006, Slaughter published the book Not Without a Storm: Towards a Communist Manifesto for the Age of Globalisation, followed by the book Bonfire of the Certainties: The Second Human Revolution in 2013.

#1613

Pierre Lévy

#16162

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Pierre Lévy is a Tunisian-born French philosopher, cultural theorist and media scholar who specializes in the understanding of the cultural and cognitive implications of digital technologies and the phenomenon of human collective intelligence.

#1614

Richard J. Breen

#143127

Overall Influence

#1615

Jacques Ellul

#21082

Overall Influence

1912 - 1994 (82 years)

Jacques Ellul was a French philosopher, sociologist, lay theologian, and professor. Noted as a Christian anarchist, Ellul was a longtime Professor of History and the Sociology of Institutions on the Faculty of Law and Economic Sciences at the University of Bordeaux. A prolific writer, he authored more than 60 books and more than 600 articles over his lifetime, many of which discussed propaganda, the impact of technology on society, and the interaction between religion and politics.

#1616

James Hughes

#4338

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

James J. Hughes is an American sociologist and bioethicist. He is the Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and is the associate provost for institutional research, assessment, and planning at UMass Boston. He is the author of Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future and is currently writing a book about moral bioenhancement tentatively titled Cyborg Buddha: Using Neurotechnology to Become Better People.

#1617

Ilse Korotin

#111697

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Ilse Erika Korotin is an Austrian philosopher and sociologist. She researched and published on the history of ideas of Nazism. At the Institute for Science and Art in Vienna, she heads the Documentation Centre for Women's Studies. Her work focuses on feminist biographical research and history of science.

#1618

Heribert Adam

#68514

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Heribert Adam is a German-Canadian university professor and author. Adam is professor emeritus of political sociology at Simon Fraser University, specializing in human rights, comparative racisms, peace studies, Southern Africa, and ethnic conflict. Originally from Frankfurt, Germany, he is a former president of the International Sociological Association's Research Committee on Ethnic, Minority and Race Relations.

#1619

Michael L. Radelet

#29397

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Michael L. Radelet is a sociologist at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is a professor in, and chairs, the Department of Sociology at the university. In his research, Radelet focuses on his interests in criminology, deviance, capital punishment, societal reaction to crime, racial disparities in death sentencing and crime victims. Radelet has taught courses covering introductory sociology, criminology for both undergraduate and graduate levels, capital punishment for both undergraduate and graduate levels, sociology of mental health and illness for both undergraduate and graduate levels...

#1620

Nicholas Tilley

#143876

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

#1621

Chad Broughton

#100352

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Chad Broughton is author of Boom, Bust, Exodus: The Rust Belt, the Maquilas, and a Tale of Two Cities and contributor to The Atlantic magazine. Broughton is an American sociologist at the University of Chicago in the Public Policy Studies program in the College. His areas of specialty include ethnography, urban sociology, poverty and inequality, transnationalism and immigration, and labor studies and the sociology of work. Broughton, born in 1971, received his Bachelor of Arts from Indiana University in 1993 and his PhD from the University of Chicago in 2001. He taught at Knox College in Gales...

#1622

Mary J. Hickman

#86780

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Mary J. Hickman is Professorial Research Fellow at St Mary's University, Twickenham. She was formerly a Professor of Irish Studies and Sociology at London Metropolitan University and director of its Institute for the Study of European Transformations. She was a member of the Irish Governments Task Force on Policy Regarding Emigrants . She has been Visiting Professor at: New York University, Columbia University and Victoria University, Melbourne. Her current research interests centre on migrations and diasporas. She has been a key figure in the documentation of The Irish Diaspora.

#1623

Chaim I. Waxman

#69223

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Chaim Isaac Waxman is an American sociologist now living in Israel. Academic career Waxman received his B.A. in sociology from Yeshiva University. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from The New School for Social Research. He was a Senior Fellow at the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute in Jerusalem until March 1, 2009. He is a Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Jewish Studies at Rutgers University.

#1624

Kathleen Gerson

Kathleen Gerson

#110266

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Kathleen Gerson is an American sociologist. She is considered as an authority on such subjects as gender equality particularly within relationships and marriages, changing gender roles, family housework patterns, travel patterns, finances and how they affect household formation, and other aspects of changing family life. Her research is often based on qualitative interviews. She is a tenured professor at New York University.

#1625

Dowell Myers

#48978

Overall Influence

Dowell Myers is a professor of urban planning and demography in the School of Policy, Planning, and Development, at the University of Southern California . He directs the school's Population Dynamics Research Group, whose recent projects have been funded by the National Institute of Health, the Haynes Foundation, Fannie Mae Foundation, and the Ford Foundation.

#1626

Andrew Billingsley

#89070

Overall Influence

1926 - Present (98 years)

Andrew Billingsley is an American sociologist, author, lecturer, and college professor who served as the 8th President of Morgan State University from 1975 to 1984. Biography Billingsley was born on March 20, 1926, in Marion, Alabama, the son of Silas and Lucy Billingsley. He served in the United States Army during World War II from 1944 to 1946. After his military service, he obtained his A.B. degree from Grinnell College in 1951. Thereafter, he obtained his M.S. degree from Boston University in 1956, and his Ph.D. from Brandeis University in 1964. While at Brandeis University, Billingsley met his future wife, Amy Loretta Tate, who was a fellow student.

#1627

Ron J. Lesthaeghe

#144540

Overall Influence

#1628

Caroline Moser

#21839

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Caroline Olivia Nonesi Moser is an academic specializing in social policy and urban social anthropology. She is primarily known for her field-based approach to research on the informal sector generally - but particularly aspects such as poverty, violence, asset vulnerability and strategies for accumulation in the urban setting. Gender analysis is central to her approach. She has looked at many countries, but the Americas have been her main interest. Countries studied closely include Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala and Jamaica.

#1629

Karin Flaake

#95833

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Karin Flaake is a German sociologist and professor at the Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg. Her publications on the adolescence of young women and men are part of the literature of socio-psychologically oriented gender research. Another focus of her work is on the chances of changing gender relations in families.

#1630

Gonzalo Portocarrero

Gonzalo Portocarrero

#89889

Overall Influence

1949 - 2019 (70 years)

Gonzalo Portocarrero was a Peruvian sociologist, social scientist and essayist. Biography He was born in Lima, the third of four children of Félix Portocarrero Olave and Lucrecia Maisch Von Humboldt. He studied at the private school La Recoleta. He studied Sociology at the National University of San Marcos and Letters at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. He was a Master in Sociology from the Latin American Social Sciences Institute and doctor in the same specialty from the University of Essex .

#1631

Susan Silbey

#88644

Overall Influence

Susan S. Silbey, a sociologist, is the Leon and Anne Goldberg Professor of Humanities, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, and Professor of Behavioral and Policy Sciences, Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

#1632

Suzan Shown Harjo

Suzan Shown Harjo

#32773

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Suzan Shown Harjo is an advocate for Native American rights. She is a poet, writer, lecturer, curator, and policy advocate who has helped Native peoples recover more than one million acres of tribal lands. After co-producing the first American Indian news show in the nation for WBAI radio while living in New York City, and producing other shows and theater, in 1974 she moved to Washington, D.C., to work on national policy issues. She served as Congressional liaison for Indian affairs in the President Jimmy Carter administration and later as president of the National Council of American Indi...

#1633

Eliezer Ben-Rafael

#78516

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Eliezer Ben-Rafael is an Israeli sociologist. He is Weinberg Professor of Sociology, emeritus, at Tel Aviv University. Ben-Rafael is known for his work on the kibbutz, on language and ethnicity in Israel, and on globalization and Jewish identity. He is editor of a series on Jewish identities for Brill Publishers.

#1634

Norbert Elias

#145747

Overall Influence

#1635

Heidi Safia Mirza

#90618

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Heidi Safia Mirza is a British academic, who is Professor of Race, Faith and Culture at Goldsmiths, University of London, Professor Emerita in Equalities Studies at the UCL Institute of Education, and Visiting Professor in Social Policy at the London School of Economics . She has done pioneering research on race, gender and identity in education, multiculturalism, Islamophobia and gendered violence, and was one of the first black women professors in Britain. She is author and editor of several notable books, including Young, Female and Black , Black British Feminism , Tackling the Roots of Ra...

#1636

Hans Mol

#110835

Overall Influence

1922 - 2017 (95 years)

Johannis Jacob Mol was a Dutch-born sociologist and Professor Emeritus in Religious Studies at McMaster University. He was President of the International Sociological Association's Sociology of Religion Research Committee from 1974 to 1978. In 1978, Mol gave the Paine Lecture at the University of Missouri and was opening speaker at the International Conference for the Sociology of Religion in Tokyo, Japan. In 1985, he was the keynote speaker for the 15th World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions. Mol is listed as an important figure in the social sciences, r...

#1637

Marina Fischer-Kowalski

#67123

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Marina Fischer-Kowalski is an Austrian sociologist and social ecologist and a professor emeritus of the University of Klagenfurt, currently teaching at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, the University of Klagenfurt and the University of Vienna. She is known for founding the Vienna School of Social Ecology and for her pioneering work on the widely used metric for material and energy flows to complement economic accounting. Fischer-Kowalski works on socio-environmental change, sustainable development and the Anthropocene.

#1638

Gilles Lipovetsky

Gilles Lipovetsky

#10802

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Gilles Lipovetsky is a French philosopher, writer, and sociologist, professor at Stendhal University in Grenoble, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France. Life and career Lipovetsky was born in Millau in 1944. He studied philosophy at University of Grenoble, and participated in the 1968 student uprising in Paris to change the French educational model. However he criticizes the model that came from that as producing alienated individuals with fragile personalities prone to emotional disorder due to hedonism and immediate gratification.

#1639

Silvia Gherardi

#146130

Overall Influence

#1640

Pyong Gap Min

#67230

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Pyong Gap Min is a sociologist, currently a Distinguished Professor of Sociology at City University of New York, Director of the Research Center for Korean Community at Queens College and also a published author. In 2012, he was awarded the Distinguished Career Award by the American Sociological Association.

#1641

Judith Blake

#133957

Overall Influence

1926 - 1993 (67 years)

Judith Kincade Blake was an American sociologist and demographer. She established the first Department of Demography, at the University of California, Berkeley and was the first holder of an endowed chair, at the University of California, Los Angeles.

#1642

Emilio J. Castilla

#90655

Overall Influence

Emilio J. Castilla is a Spanish academic, currently residing in Boston, MA. He is Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. His research primarily focuses on the sociological aspects of work and employment. He is particularly interested in examining how social networks and organizational processes influence employment outcomes over time, and he tackles these questions by examining different empirical settings with unique longitudinal datasets, at both the individual and organizational level.

#1643

Robert Clark Lindsay

#146340

Overall Influence

#1644

Ann C. Noble

#28768

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Ann C. Noble is a sensory chemist and retired professor from the University of California, Davis. During her time at the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology, Noble invented the "Aroma Wheel" which is credited with enhancing the public understanding of wine tasting and terminology. At the time of her hiring at UC Davis in 1974, Noble was the first woman hired as a faculty member of the Viticulture department. Noble retired from Davis in 2002 and in 2003 was named Emeritus Professor of Enology. Since retirement she has participated as a judge in the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Compet...

#1645

Richard T. Wright

Richard T. Wright

#103247

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Richard T. Wright is an American criminologist. He is Board of Regent's Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Georgia State University in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. He served as Chair of the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at GSU from 2014–2018, and was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Criminology in 2009.

#1646

Rebecca Sandefur

#57640

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Rebecca Leigh Sandefur is an American sociologist. She is Professor in the School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University and a faculty fellow of the American Bar Foundation . At the ABF, she founded the access to justice research initiative in 2010. Sandefur also won a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship in 2018 for "promoting a new, evidence-based approach to increasing access to civil justice for low-income communities".

#1647

Gary Bouma

#109918

Overall Influence

1942 - 2021 (79 years)

Gary Donald Bouma was an author and a professor of sociology at Monash University in Melbourne, Victoria. He was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan and was a citizen of both the United States and Australia.

#1648

Masha Gessen

#1459

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Masha Gessen is a Russian-American journalist, author, translator, and activist who has been an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Gessen is nonbinary and trans and uses they/them pronouns. Gessen has written extensively on LGBT rights. Described as "Russia's leading LGBT rights activist", they have said that for many years they were "probably the only publicly out gay person in the whole country". They now live in New York with their wife and children.

#1649

Jocelyn Viterna

#146816

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Jocelyn Viterna is an American academic. She is a professor of Sociology at Harvard University, and the author of a book about the role of women in the Salvadoran Civil War. Early life Jocelyn Viterna grew up in Curtis, Nebraska and Manhattan, Kansas. She earned a bachelor's degree from Kansas State University in 1995 and a PhD from Indiana University Bloomington in Sociology and Latin American Studies in 2003.

#1650

Jennifer Dowd

#54242

Overall Influence

Jennifer Beam Dowd is an American social scientist who is a Professor of Demography and Population Health and deputy director of the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science at the University of Oxford. Her research considers the social determinants of health and the relationship between infections and immune function. She is a member of Those Nerdy Girls, an all-woman team of public health researchers who are relaying COVID-19 information as part of Dear Pandemic.

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