Mapping Intellectual Heritage

PTJ has an interesting idea:

I did a little digging and thus far have been completely unable to locate something that I would have thought that someone would have already assembled: an online searchable database that mapped adviser-advisee relationships in IR. So far as I know, there is no such thing. Not yet.

I think that a map like this would be a very useful tool for all kinds of research on the sociology of the field, besides all the ways it would serve as fodder for intriguing hallway and bar conversations at conferences (“I never knew that X was your grand-adviser; did you ever meet her? What was she like?”) It would also be a tool for a certain amount of reflexive self-discovery; I recently learned that my grand-adviser was a labor historian named Henry Pelling, and that my PhD adviser Ira Katznelson’s undergraduate thesis was supervised by none other than the brilliant American historian Richard Hofstadter (which makes Hofstadter what, exactly — a “grand-influence” on me? We may need a whole new vocabulary for this map). I can think of dozens of interesting questions one might productively ask if this data were available to help produce answers…

I want to keep this simple, so I am thinking of only asking people maybe three things: who was your PhD adviser, which institution granted your PhD, and (to capture “grand-influences” and other such people) which 2-3 contemporaries other than your formal adviser would you cite as important intellectual influences. [The phrasing of that last one is a little awkward, but what I mean is “don’t mention classic or canonical authors, mention people who were actually productive during your lifetime but are members of a previous academic generation.”

I think that this would be an exceedingly useful project; would also help track the influence of particular graduate programs across the discipline. There’s a good discussion in the comments of Duck about how the project might move forward. For my part:

Advisor: Jonathan Mercer (makes Robert Jervis my “grand influence”)
Institution: University of Washington
Influences: Elizabeth Kier (also served on my committee), Alastair Iain Johnston, Stephen Biddle