Akosua Adomako Ampofo Bio

Akosua Adomako Ampofo is Professor of African and Gender Studies at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana (UG).  Adomako Ampofo received her BSc in Architecture and MSc in Development Planning from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi; a PG Diploma in Spatial Planning from the University of Dortmund; and her PhD in Sociology from Vanderbilt University. Her areas of interest include African Knowledge systems; Higher education; Identity Politics; Gender relations; Masculinities; and Popular Culture. She considers herself an activist scholar, and at the heart of her work are questions of identity and power—within families, institutions, political and religious spaces, and the knowledge industry.  In her current work on black masculinities, she explores the shifting nature of identities among black men in Africa and the diaspora. Earlier work on masculinities has explored the ways in which the discourse of “men of God” (i.e religious leaders) becomes a meta knowledge and (re)defines femininity.  In 2015 she presented the African Studies Review distinguished lecture, subsequently published in 2016 as “Re-viewing Studies on Africa, #Black Lives Matter, and Envisioning the Future of African Studies” in African Studies Review (59)2: 7-27.  She co-edited, with Cheryl Rodriguez and Dzodzi Tsikata Transatlantic Feminisms: Women’s and Gender Studies in Africa and the Diaspora. Lanham, MD, Lexington Books (2015).  In 2005 she became the foundation Director of the University of Ghana’s Centre for Gender Studies and Advocacy, and from 2010-2015 she was the Director of the Institute of African Studies.  She is currently Acting Dean of International Programmes at the Univeristy of Ghana.  Adomako Ampofo is President of the African Studies Association of Africa http://www.as-aa.org/index.php/officers; Editor-in-Chief, Contemporary Journal of African Studies; Co-Editor, Critical Investigations into Humanitarianism in Africa blog, www.cihablog.com and a past editor of African Studies Review and Ghana Studies.  She is a fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.

@adomakoampofo