The African Studies Review together with the ASA (African Studies Association, Annual Meeting in San Diego, 11/19-11/22, 2015) Board launched a distinguished lecture in 2011 featuring state of the art research in African Studies. This year, the speaker will be Dr. Akosua Adomako Ampofo. Her lecture is entitled “Re-viewing Studies on Africa, and Envisioning her Futures.”
Dr Akosua Adomako Ampofo is Professor of African and Gender Studies, and Director of the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon. An activist-scholar, she is a member of, and has worked with many organisations in Ghana and abroad, addressing African Knowledge systems; Identity Politics; Gender-based Violence; Women’s work; Masculinities; and Gendered Representations in Popular Culture (music and religion). She seeks to understand where some of our “gender trouble” has come from and the new “gender troubles” being invented. Earlier work looked at reproductive health issues, critiquing Euro-centric notions (that infantilized African women).
Dr Adomako Ampofo received her BSc Architecture and MSc Development Planning from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, and her PhD in Sociology from Vanderbilt University, TN. Her recent publications include: Discourses in African Musicology. J.H.Kwabena Nketia Festschrift. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press (with Kwasi, Ampene, Godwin Adjei and Albert Awedoba, 2015); Transatlantic Feminisms: Women’s and Gender Studies in Africa and the Diaspora. Lanham, MD, Lexington Books (with Cheryl Rodriguez and Dzodzi Tsikata, 2015); “Changing Representations of Women in Ghanaian Popular music: Marrying Research and Advocacy” Current Sociology (60): 258-279 (with Awo Asiedu, 2012); African Feminist Politics of Knowledge – Tensions, Challenges and Possibilities. Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute (with Signe Arnfred, 2010).
Dr Adomako Ampofo has been a public speaker on campuses and other forums around the world, and is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships; she has been a Fulbright Junior and Fulbright New Century Scholar. In 2015-2016 she will be a Fulbright Scholar-in Residence at Concordia University, Irvine, CA. In 2010 she was awarded the Sociologists for Women in Society Feminist Activism award and in 2014 was a Mellon Fellow with the Centre for African Studies at the University of Cape Town.
At the University of Ghana, Dr Adomako Ampofo has been a two-time elected member of the University of Ghana Council, the founding Head of the Centre for Gender Studies and Advocacy, and serves on numerous boards and committees at home and abroad such as the Centre for African Studies, University of the Free State, South Africa; Ghana National AIDS Commission (2001 to 2008); the Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa Fellowship Program (of the Social Science Research Council); International Steering Committee of the African Heritage Initiative (University of Michigan).
Dr Adomako Ampofo is a member of ASA’s cognate organizations—the Ghana Studies Association, where she was co-editor of the journal Ghana Studies with Stefan Miescher; and the Women’s Caucus, of which she has been co-convenor with Mary Osirim and subsequently Maria Cattell. Dr Adomako Ampofo is the founding Vice-President of The African Studies Association of Africa (ASAA; http://www.as-aa.org/), Co-president of the Research Committee on Women and Society of the International Sociological Association with Josephine Beoku-Betts; Co-Editor, Critical Investigations into Humanitarianism in Africa blog, www.cihablog.com; and an honorary Fellow of the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa.
For those who are unable to attend, stay tuned for a post-conference summary post by Dr. Akosua Adomako Ampofo!
I would like to be part of the network which CIHA provides , especially as it relates to interfaith and other NGO activities.
Congratulations to Prof Akosua for this great assignment. You are indeed a pride to Africa. Thank you for this great feat .