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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Sociology,

#2151

David Jacobs

#176270

Overall Influence

David Jacobs is an American sociologist and professor emeritus of sociology at Ohio State University. He is known for his work in political sociology and political economy, which has included research on issues such as labor relations, policing, and capital punishment. For example, his research has found that death sentences are most common in U.S. states where lynchings were formerly the most frequent, and that black death row inmates convicted of killing whites are more likely to be executed than whites convicted of killing blacks. Jacobs also noted that U.S. states with the largest African ...

#2152

Jennifer Christine Nash

#122537

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (44 years)

Jennifer Christine Nash is the Jean Fox O'Barr Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University within its Trinity College of Arts and Sciences. Her research interests include Black feminist theory, feminist legal theory, Black sexual politics, black motherhood, black maternal health, race and law, and intersectionality.

#2153

Janet Lauritsen

#88736

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Janet Lynn Lauritsen is an American criminologist and the Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. Education and career Dr. Lauritsen received her B.A. , M.A. , and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After serving as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Illinois , she joined the Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis as an Assistant Professor in 1990. She was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 1996 as well as to full Professor in 2002.

#2154

Jason L. Powell

#178252

Overall Influence

#2155

Carol Ruth Silver

#30772

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Carol Ruth Silver is an American lawyer and civil rights activist. She was a Freedom Rider, arrested and incarcerated for 40 days in Mississippi. She was among those on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors allegedly targeted by Dan White in the Moscone–Milk assassinations, but escaped assassination because she was not in her office at the time of the murders.

#2156

Roderick Ferguson

#127590

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Roderick Ferguson is Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and American Studies at Yale University. He was previously professor of African American and Gender and Women's Studies in the African American Studies Department at the University of Illinois, Chicago. His scholarship includes work on African-American literature, queer theory and queer studies, classical and contemporary social theory, African-American intellectual history, sociology of race and ethnic relations, and black cultural theory. Among his contributions to queer theory, Ferguson is credited with coining the te...

#2157

Indrawati Oey

#151791

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Indrawati Oey is a New Zealand food scientist, full professor at the University of Otago. Early life and education Oey was born in Malang, East Java, Indonesia in 1970. Academic career After a PhD at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Oey moved to the University of Otago and rose to full professor and head of the Department of Food Sciences. She is a principal investigator of the Riddet Institute, a national food research centre in New Zealand.

#2158

Joseph Donnermeyer

#80129

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Joseph F. Donnermeyer is a Professor Emeritus at Ohio State University, School of Environment and Natural Resources. His main subject is rural criminology. He has also a focus on Amish studies, especially on change in Amish and Old Order Mennonite communities.

#2159

Agnes Bolsø

#171584

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Agnes Bolsø is a Norwegian sociologist and expert on gender studies, particularly studies of sexuality. She is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and was director of its Centre for Gender Studies from 2005 to 2007. She was editor of Tidsskrift for kjønnsforskning from 2009 to 2011.

#2160

Ronald L. Simons

#132347

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Ronald L. Simons is an American sociologist, criminologist, and Distinguished Research Professor of Sociology at the University of Georgia. Early life and education Simons was born on December 18, 1946. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology and Psychology from the University of Northern Iowa, his M.S.S.W. Social Work from the University of Wisconsin and PhD in Sociology from Florida State University.

#2161

Pushkala Prasad

#132136

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Pushkala Prasad is an Indian American academic, researcher and writer. She is the Zankel Chair Professor of Management and Liberal Arts at Skidmore College. She is best known for her book Crafting Qualitative Research: Working in the Post-Positivist Traditions and her research on workplace diversity. A great deal of her work is done in collaboration with her husband, Anshuman Prasad.

#2162

Arnout van de Rijt

#174236

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (46 years)

Arnout van de Rijt is a Dutch sociologist. He studied music at the Utrecht School of the Arts and sociology at Utrecht University. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Cornell University in 2007 and worked until 2016 as Assistant and Associate Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University. Since 2016 he has worked as Professor of Sociology at Utrecht University. In 2018 he was elected member of the European Academy of Sociology. He joined the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute in September of 2019. He has served as president of the International Network of Analytical Sociology since 2021.

#2163

Eran Shor

#101367

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Eran Shor is an Israeli-Canadian sociologist and a Professor of Sociology. He is the William Dawson Scholar at McGill University. His research interests include the causes and effects of political conflict and violence, ethnicity and nationalism, the sociology of health, and the media coverage of women and ethnic minorities. He focuses on the relationship between states’ counterterrorist policies and their respect for human rights and civil liberties. His research methods include computational analysis of big data, cross-national regression analysis and meta-analyses, as well as in-depth quali...

#2164

Bjørn Hvinden

#174577

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Bjørn Hvinden is a Norwegian sociologist. He is a research professor and managing director of Norwegian Social Research. He has formerly been director of the Nordic Centre of Excellence in Welfare Research "Reassessing the Nordic Welfare Model", a cooperation between universities and research institutions in all the Nordic countries. He was Professor of Sociology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology from 1995 to 2007. His research fields are social policy, disability and international migration.

#2165

William Simon

#167804

Overall Influence

1930 - 2000 (70 years)

William Simon was a sociologist of human sexualities between 1970 and 2000. His co-authored book, Sexual Conduct: The Social Sources of Human Conduct played a major role in shaping the contemporary sociology of sexuality and critical sexualities studies. His work helped pioneer a theory of sexual scripting and he was a gentle but radical advocate of sexual tolerance. He was an early advocate of gay rights and testified against obscenity laws.

#2166

Ernest van den Haag

Ernest van den Haag

#28315

Overall Influence

1914 - 2002 (88 years)

Ernest van den Haag was a Dutch-born American sociologist, social critic, and author. He was John M. Olin Professor of Jurisprudence and Public Policy at Fordham University. He was best known for his contributions to National Review.

#2167

Rhoda Howard-Hassmann

#118611

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann is a Canadian social scientist who specializes in international human rights. Biography Howard-Hassmann was born Rhoda Howard in Scotland. Her mother was Scottish, her father was a refugee from Nazi Germany. She was brought to Canada at a young age and attended public schools in Quebec and southern Ontario. She is married and the mother of one son, born in 1981. In 1999 she changed her legal name from Rhoda E. Howard to Rhoda E. Hassmann, but she publishes her academic work as Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann. She has lived in Hamilton, Ontario since 1976.

#2168

Blaženka Despot

#94455

Overall Influence

1930 - 2001 (71 years)

Blaženka Despot was a Croatian philosopher, socialist feminist, and sociologist. After finishing high school in Zagreb in 1948 and graduating in philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, she received her PhD in Ljubljana in 1970 with a thesis on humanity of the technological society. During the period 1956-64 she worked as a high school professor, and later as an assistant at the Department of Socialism at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. In 1974 she was appointed as an associate professor of sociology and political economy, receiving full professorship in 1980 as a Professor of Marxism, socialism and socialist self-management at the Veterinary Faculty in Zagreb.

#2169

Menachem Amir

#87900

Overall Influence

1930 - 2015 (85 years)

Menachem Amir is an Israeli criminologist. He spent most of his career as a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he was the Benjamin Berger Chair Professor of Criminology until he retired in 1999. Amir received the Israel Prize from the Israeli government in 2003 for his work, one of the first two criminologists to do so alongside Shlomo Giora Shoham.

#2170

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.

#2171

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.

#2172

Jeffrey Swanson

#102288

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Jeffrey W. Swanson is an American medical sociologist and professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University School of Medicine. He is an expert in psychiatric epidemiology, especially as regards the epidemiology of violence and serious mental illness.

#2173

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.

#2174

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.

#2175

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.

#2176

Stuart Henry

#89355

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Stuart Henry is professor emeritus, Criminal justice and former director of the School of Public Affairs, San Diego State University . He has also been visiting professor of criminology at the University of Kent's School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research from 2008 to 2013 and visiting research scholar in sociology at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, 2017.

#2177

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...

#2178

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...

#2179

Robert van Krieken

#175393

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Robert van Krieken is an Australian sociologist, Professor of Sociology at the University of Sydney. He has also worked as Professor of Sociology at University College Dublin . He is the author of Children and the State, Norbert Elias, Celebrity Society, and co-author of the sociology textbook Sociology, originally titled Sociology: Themes and Perspectives , and Celebrity and the Law . He has served in a variety of offices in the International Sociological Association, currently a Board Member of Working Group 02 Historical and Comparative Sociology. In 2006-2010 he was a member of ...

#2180

John Gilderbloom

#108580

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

John I. "Hans" Gilderbloom is a Dutch American community organizer, academic, author, and researcher. He works as an international consultant on creating livable neighborhoods and cities, owns a real estate company that renovates historic housing, and is a professor of urban and public affairs at the University of Louisville. In 2014 he was nominated as a Fellow of the Scholars Strategy Network housed at Harvard University. He has been ranked as one of the "top 100 urban thinkers in the world."

#2181

John Smith

#73961

Overall Influence

1927 - 2002 (75 years)

John Harold Smith was an English sociologist. He was Professor of Sociology at the University of Southampton from 1964 to 1991. Early life Born in Folkestone on 21 April 1927, Smith attended Harvey Grammar School; during World War II, he served with the Royal Observer Corps and as a meteorologist in the Royal Navy. On demobilisation, he read sociology at the London School of Economics, graduating in 1950.

#2182

Daniel Kelly

#141291

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Daniel Martin Kelly OBE FRSA is a British sociologist and the Royal College of Nursing Chair of Nursing Research at Cardiff University. He is known for his works on cancer and palliative care and received Order of the British Empire for his services to cancer care research and education. He was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Nursing in 2016.

#2183

Duane Rousselle

Duane Rousselle

#100658

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (42 years)

Duane Rousselle is a Canadian sociological theorist, Lacanian psychoanalyst, and Professor of Sociology. He works in several academic fields including Social Movement Studies, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Cultural Sociology, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Anarchist Studies, and Continental Philosophy. His work attempts to introduce an alternative to scholarly discourses that aim to produce consistent and coherent bodies of knowledge . It also offers a counterpoint to what Jacques Lacan has called "capitalist discourse."

#2184

Khairallah Assar

Khairallah Assar

#123823

Overall Influence

1935 - 2015 (80 years)

Khairallah Ahmad Assar, , was professor of sociology at the University of Annaba, Algeria, from 1976 to 1996. Native of Hama in Syria, he studied at the American University of Beirut in 1956 and obtained his PhD from the University of Heidelberg, Germany, in 1964.

#2185

José Woldenberg

#121864

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

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

#2186

Jost Reinecke

#130597

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Jost Reinecke is the professor of Quantitative Methods of Empirical Social Research at Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University. Academia Jost Reinecke is Professor of Quantitative Methods of Empirical Social Research and board member of the Institute for interdisciplinary research on conflict and violence, member of the Center for Statistics and of the research training group on “group-focused enmity” as well as of the ASA. His research focuses on rational-choice theories in social sciences; methodology and application of models of classification and structural equation in cross- and lon...

#2187

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.

#2188

Peter Saunders

#130292

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Peter Robert Saunders is a British sociologist. He was born in Croydon and educated at Selhurst Grammar School for Boys. He gained a BA in Sociology from the University of Kent, and a PhD from Chelsea College, while also acting as a Research Officer at the University of Essex.

#2189

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.

#2190

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.

#2191

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...

#2192

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.

#2193

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.

#2194

Jeffrey Morenoff

#91911

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Jeffrey David Morenoff is an American sociologist and professor of sociology at the University of Michigan. He is also a professor of public policy in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, a research professor at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, and the director of the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan. He is known for researching neighborhood environments, social determinants of health, crime, and social inequality.

#2195

Marc Galanter

#24439

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

Marc Galanter is a Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Previously he was the John and Rylla Bosshard Professor of Law and South Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and LSE Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He teaches South Asian Law, Law and Social Science, Legal Profession, Religion and the Law, Contracts, Dispute Processing and Negotiations. He has authored numerous books and articles related to law, the legal profession and the provision of legal services in India.

#2196

Thomas Klikauer

#125289

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Thomas Klikauer is a Senior lecturer teaching Human resource management and Industrial Relations at the Sydney Graduate School of Management at the Western Sydney University, Australia. He holds MAs from the United States and Germany and a PhD from Warwick University, UK. His research into the motor vehicle and shipping industry led to several books focusing on Communication, and Management at Work, Management Communication, Communicative Ethics and Action. His current interest is in ethics at work and management. Thomas Klikauer is a leading authority on Managerialism.

#2197

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.

#2198

Ricardo Duchesne

#63064

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Ricardo Duchesne is a Puerto Rican-born Canadian historical sociologist and former professor at the University of New Brunswick's Saint John campus. His main research interests are Western civilization, the rise of the West, and multiculturalism. Duchesne's views on immigration and multiculturalism have been described as racist and white nationalist. He has denied being a racist to the mainstream press, but has described himself as being "the only academic in Canada, and possibly the Western world, who questions the ideology of diversity while advocating white identity politics."

#2199

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.

#2200

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.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions