[We have discontinued the compilation of publications by GSA members at year’s end. Rather, publications and other achievements are posted on our website, on Twitter (@GhanaStudiesASA) and Facebook throughout the year.
See also our Newsletter Archive, 1989-2011]
2016 Year in Review
At last, the GSA’s Year in Review (2016) is finally here! Viewing our many accomplishments from the distance that February affords makes them appear all the more impressive! GSA members have published new books and innovative articles in leading journals, while also editing a dynamic range of special issues and edited collections. Our brilliance and professional service have been recognized by induction into a variety of prestigious academic societies and we’ve taken home some of our respective discipline’s top awards. We’re visible in local, regional, national, and international scholarly organizations and institutions, and in several instances we’re at the helm of them too. All the while we maintain the congenial and supportive ethos which is the hallmark of the GSA community.
Akosua Adomako Ampofo was inducted into the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Jean Allman is P.I. on the National Endowment for the Humanities, Next Generation Humanities PhD Planning Grant, “Cohorts, Courses, Qualifications, and Careers: Reconceptualizing the Humanities PhD at Washington University in St. Louis.” In 2016-2017 Jean is also serving as Vice-President of the African Studies Association, and will assume the presidency of the ASA for 2017-2018.
Nana Akua Anyidoho
Publications
Anyidoho, N.A. & Steel, W.F. Informal-formal linkages in market and street trading in Accra. African Review of Economics and Finance, 8(2), 171-200.
Steel, W.F., Anyidoho, N.A., Dadzie, F.Y. & Hosier, R.H. Developing rural markets for solar products: Lessons from Ghana. Energy for Sustainable Development, 31, 178-184.
Yeboah, T., Sumberg, J., Flynn, J. & Anyidoho, N.A. What is a desirable job? What makes a job desirable? Findings from a Q study with students and parents in rural Ghana. European Journal of Development Research,
Gareth Austin
Publications
‘Sub-Saharan Africa’ in Joerg Baten (ed.), A History of the Global Economy from 1500 to the Present (Cambridge University Press), pp. 316-50.
‘Is Africa too late for “late development”? Gerschenkron south of the Sahara’, in Diverse Development Paths and Structural Transformation in the Escape from Poverty, edited by Martin Andersson and Tobias Axelsson (Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 206-35.
‘Comment: the return of capitalism as a concept’ in Capitalism: the Reemergence of a Historical Concept, edited by Jürgen Kocka and Marcel van der Linden (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), pp. 207-34.
Scholarly Awards and Activities:
Chair of Economic History at Cambridge University.
Gretchen Bauer
Publications
With Josephine Dawuni, eds. 2016. Gender and the Judiciary in Africa: From Obscurity to Parity? New York: Routledge.
“’A Lot of Head Wraps’: African Contributions to the Third Wave of Electoral Gender Quotas,” Politics, Groups and Identities, 2016. 4(2): 196-213.
Scholarly Awards and Activities
Fulbright Scholar award, LECIAD and CEGENSA, University of Ghana, Legon
Fulbright Specialist Roster (2016-2021).
Sara Berry received the Distinguished Africanist award from the African Studies Association.
George Bob-Milliar
Publications
Lauren M. MacLean, George M. Bob-Milliar, Liz Baldwin & Elisa Dickey (December, 2016). “The Construction of Citizenship and the Public Provision of Electricity for the 2014 World Cup in Ghana,” The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 54, No. 4, pp.555-590.
Scholarly Awards and Activities
Visiting Research Fellow, Centre of African Studies, University of Cambridge, UK.
Head of Department, History and Political Studies, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology, Kumasi-Ghana.
Florian Carl
Publications
With Eric D. Otchere (eds.). Music, Health and Wellbeing: African Perspectives (Special Guest-Edited Issue of the Legon Journal of the Humanities, vol. 27, no. 2). Legon, Ghana: College of Humanities, University of Ghana.
With Rosemond Kutsidzo. “Music and Wellbeing in Everyday Life in Ghana: An Exploratory Study.” Legon Journal of the Humanities 27(2): 36-58. DOI: 10.4314/ljh.v27i2.3
With Eric D. Otchere. “On the Music Preferences of Ghanaian Undergraduate Students: A Word or Two.” West African Journal of Musical Arts Education 3(1):75-93.
Cati Coe
Publications
“Not a Nurse, Not Househelp: The New Occupation of Elder Carer in Urban Ghana.” In “Aging in Ghana,” a special issue of Ghana Studies 19(1): 46-72, edited by Ama de-Graft Aikins and Nana Araba Apt.
“Longing for a House: Ghanaians’ Responses to the Dignity Threats of Elder Care Work in the United States.” Ethos 44(3): 352-374.
“Orchestrating Care in Time: Ghanaian Migrant Women, Family, and Reciprocity.” American Anthropologist 118(1): 37-48.
“Translations in Kinscripts: Child Circulation among Ghanaians Abroad.” In Affective Circuits: African Migrations to Europe and the Pursuit of Social Regeneration. Edited by Jennifer Cole and Christian Groes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
“Child Circulation and West African Migrations.” In Geographies of Children and Young People: Vol 6, Movements, Mobilities and Journeys. Edited by Caitríona Ní Laoire, Allen White, and Tracey Skelton. Singapore: Springer-Verlag, September.
Scholarly Activities and Awards
International Senior Fellow, University of Bayreuth. Research grant to support international collaboration with Dr. Erdmute Alber, “Changing Age-Scripts in West Africa.” (2017-2020)
Ebony Coletu and Kendra Field received the GSA’s 2016 Boahen-Wilks Article Prize for their their brilliant co-authored piece, “The Chief Sam Movement, A Century Later”, in Transition, No. 114, Gay Nigeria (2014), pp. 108-130
Harcourt Fuller’s Queen Nanny: Legendary Maroon Chieftainess (www.nannythemovie.com), received a Spirit Award from the Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival & Lecture Series in NYC, as well as a Citation from the New York City Council. Fuller was also the executive producer of “Granny Nanny Come Oh: Jamaican Maroon Kromanti and Kumina Music and Other Oral Traditions,” a double-CD by the Moore Town Granny Nanny Cultural Group, who recently completed a 3-month tour of the United States. It features 31 tracks of live studio recordings of traditional Jamaican Maroon and Bongo-Kumina songs, drumming and other instrumentals, oral history, stories, African language retentions (including Twi and Kikongo), and other verbal arts. The album, which was recorded at the Jamaica Music Institute Recording Studio (JaMIN) in Trench Town, Jamaica, also features a 40-page color booklet with photographs and information about Maroon history and music.
Carly Goodman defended her dissertation, “Global Game of Chance: The U.S. Diversity Visa Lottery, Transnational Migration, and Cultural Diplomacy in Africa, 1990-2016,” and received her Ph.D. in History from Temple University. She was named a 2016 Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow and is a Communications Analyst at American Friends Service Committee.
Sandra Greene
Publications
African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade, Volume 2: Essays on Sources and Methods. Edited with Alice Bellagamba and Martin A. Klein. New York: Cambridge University Press.
“African Intellectual Ideas in the Age of Legal Slavery and the Slave Trade,” with Oluwatoyin B. Oduntan. In Alice Bellagamba, Sandra E. Greene, and Martin Klein (eds.) African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade in Africa, Volume 2: Essays on Sources and Methods. Cambridge University Press.
“Christian Missionaries on Record: Documenting Slavery and the Slave Trade from the late Fifteenth to the early Twentieth Century,” in African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade in Africa, Volume 2: Essays on Sources and Methods. Edited with Alice Bellagamba and Martin A. Klein. New York: Cambridge University Press.
“Introduction,” with Alice Bellagamba and Martin Klein (eds.). African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade in Africa, Volume 2: Essays on Sources and Methods. Cambridge University Press.
Scholarly Awards and Activities
Elected Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS)
Elected by the Cornell University Board of Trustees to hold the Stephen ’59 and Madeline ’60 Anbinder Endowed Chair
American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) selected Sandra’s book, Gender, Ethnicity and Social Change on the Upper Slave Coast, for e-publication as a high quality text in the humanities because of its continuing importance for teaching and research.
Leslie James
“Trans-Atlantic Passages: black identity construction in West African and West Indian newspapers, 1935-1950”. In D. Peterson, S. Newell, and E. Hunter (eds.)
African Print Cultures. (University of Michigan Press, 2016): 49-74.
“Ambiguity and Imprint: British racial logics, colonial commissions, and the creolisation of Britain in the 1930s and 1940s”. With D. Whittall. Calalloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters 39, no. 1 (2016): 166-184.
“Activating the Past” The Critique Magazine (September-October 2016)
Dennis Laumann was promoted to full professor at the University of Memphis and his widely read text _Colonial Africa, 1884-1994_ was translated into Arabic by Belabbes Ali Abdelhafid and published in Algeria.
Atta Kwami
Publications
“Vincent Akwete Kofi”; “Oku Ampofo”; and “The Akwapim Six” in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism
“#19 Prelude to the Microcron No. 14 by Owusu-Ankomah”
“Kumasi Realism: Alex Amofa,” In The Ghana Reader: History, Culture,
Politics, Kwasi Konadu and Clifford C. Campbell, eds, (Duke University Press), pp. 416-421.
Scholarly Awards and Activities
2016 Thami Mnyele Foundation Award
Karen Lauterbach published Christianity, Wealth, and Spiritual Power in Ghana (Palgrave Macmillan).
Carola Lentz
Publications
“African middle classes: lessons from transnational studies and a research agenda.” In Henning Melber (Hg.), The Rise of Africa’s Middle Class: Myths, Realities and Critical Engagements. London: Zed Books, 2016, 17‑53.
“A lasting memory: the contested history of the Nkrumah statue.” In Bea Lundt and Christoph Marx (eds.), Kwame Nkrumah 1909−1972: A Controversial African Visionary. Historische Mitteilungen, Beiheft 96. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2016, 153‑84
“World anthropology with an accent: the discipline in Germany since the 1970s,” with Bierschenk and Matthias Krings. American Anthropologist 118 (2), 2016: 364‑80.
“Culture: the making, unmaking and remaking of an anthropological concept.” Working Papers of the Department of Anthropology and African Studies of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz 166, 2016 [URL: http://www.ifeas.uni-mainz.de/Dateien/AP166.pf
Scholarly Awards and Activities
Together with Konstanze N’Guessan, Carola organized a panel, The un/doing of national belonging in African public rituals and performances, which was sponsored by Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, and took place at the ASAUK Biennial Conference 2016, Cambridge (UK), September 2016. Since January 2016 she is also serving as the chairperson of the Social Sciences Class in the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
Carina Ray
Publications
“Oxford Street, Accra: Rethinking the Roots of Cosmopolitanism from an Africanist Historian’s Perspective,” PMLA 131:2 (2016), 505-514.
Scholarly Awards and Activities
2016 Wesley-Logan Book Prize for African Diaspora History, American Historical Association
Society for the Humanities Fellowship, Cornell University
Editor, Ghana Studies
Founding Editor (with Toyin Falola), African Identities, Cambridge University Press Book Series
Dzodzi Tsikata was appointed Director of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana and inducted into the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Sjaak van der Geest
Publications
“Will families in Ghana continue to care for older people? Logic and contradiction in policy.”
In: J. Hoffman & K. Pype (eds) Ageing in Sub-Saharan Africa: Spaces and Practices of Care.
London: Policy Press, pp. 21-41.
“Why are the poor less covered in Ghana’s national health insurance? A critical analysis of policy and practice,” with A.M. Kotoh, International Journal for Equity in Health 15:34.
“Studying older people in Ghana: Closing reflections.” Ghana Studies 19 (1): 190-201.
[compiled from information submitted by GSA members]
2015 Year in Review
[First posted on Ghana Studies Association Facebook page on 2 January. Compiled by Carina Ray. Note: This list is based on members’ response to the call to submit articles, books, awards, etc. and is by no means a comprehensive list of achievements.]
2015 was an incredibly productive year for GSA members. Here’s a look back at some of what we accomplished.
New Books
Mensah Adinkrah, _Witchcraft, Witches and Violence in Ghana (Berghahn Books).
John Collins, Fela: Kalakuta Notes (Wesleyan University Press)
Birgit Meyer, Sensational Movies: Video, Vision, and Christianity in Ghana_ (University of California Press)
Carina Ray, Crossing the Color Line: Race, Sex, and the Contested Politics of Colonialism in Ghana (Ohio University Press)
Paul Schauert, Staging Ghana: Artistry and Nationalism in State Dance Ensembles (Indiana University Press)
Weaver Jesse, Trickster Theatre: The Poetics of Freedom in Urban Africa (Indiana University Press)
Kate Skinner, The Fruits of Freedom in British Togoland: Literacy, Politics and Nationalism, 1914-2014 (Cambridge UP)
Akosua Adomako Ampofo (co-editor). Discourses in African Musicology. Festschrift in Honor of Emeritus Professor Nketia: Discourses in African Musicology.
Journal Articles and Book Chapters
Mensah Adinkrah, “Suicide and Mortuary Beliefs and Practices of the Akan of Ghana,” Omega: Journal of Death and Dying.
Nana Akua Anyidoho and Josephine Akosua Adomako Ampofo, “‘How can I come to work on Saturday when I have a family?’: Ghanaian women and bank work in a neo-liberal era” in Transatlantic feminisms: women and Gender Studies in Africa and the diaspora (Lexington Books).
Nana Akua Anyidoho and Takyiwaa Manuh, “To Beijing and back: Reflections on the influence of the Beijing Conference on popular notions of women’s empowerment in Ghana,” IDS Bulletin.
Nana Akua Anyidoho, et al. “Young people, agriculture, and employment in rural Africa” in African youth and the persistence of marginalization: employment, politics, and prospects for change (Routledge).
Sandra Greene, “Minority Voices: Abolitionism in West Africa,” Slavery and Abolition.
Karen Lauterbach, “Religious Entrepreneurs in Ghana” in Cultural Entrepreneurship in Africa (Routledge) 19-36.
Rebecca Shumway, “From Atlantic Creoles to African Nationalists: Reflections on the Historiography of Nineteenth-Century Fanteland,” History in Africa: A Journal of Method.
Rebecca Shumway, “Palavers and Treaty-Making in the British Acquisition of the Gold Coast Colony (West Africa)” in Empire by Treaty: Negotiating European Expansion, 1600-1900 (Oxford University Press).
Awards, Grants, Honors, and Appointments:
Akosua Adomako Ampofo delivered the African Studies Review Distinguished lecture at ASA 2015.
Jean Allman received the GSA’s inaugural Boahen-Wilks Article Prize for “Phantoms of the Archive: Kwame Nkrumah, A Nazi Pilot Named Hanna, and the Contingencies of Postcolonial History-Writing,” which appeared in The American Historical Review.
Dzodzi Tsikata was elected President of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), the largest “independent pan-African research organisation primarily focusing on social sciences research in Africa”.
Patricia Serwaa Afrifa won a 2015 GSA Research Grant to support her work on “Formalised Childcare Arrangements in Ghana: A Study of Selected Day Care Centres in Accra.”
Samson Ninfaazu won a 2015 GSA Research Grant to support his work on “Disambiguating the ambiguities: a socio-historical study of the Lobi of northwestern Ghana.”
Patience Gyamenah won a 2015 GSA Research Grant to support her work on “Culture and healthcare pluralism among Akan cancer patients in Ghana.”
David Amponsah successfully defended his PhD dissertation on the politics of indigenous religion in colonial and post-colonial Ghana at Harvard University (Religious Studies).
Adams Bodomo was appointed Chair Professor of African Languages and Literatures at the University of Vienna, making him the first black person to hold such a position at the University of Vienna.
Manna Duah was awarded a 2015 SSRC Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship.
Sandra Greene was elected and inducted into the Class of African Studies Scholars, Ambrosiana Academy, Milan Italy for her work on West African history. This is a lifetime appointment.
Abdulai Iddrisu was granted tenure and promotion at St. Olaf College.
Nimoh Michael successfully defended his PhD thesis on labour unrest in Ghana at KNUST (Historical Studies).
Paul Nugent was awarded a 5-year €2.5 million European Research Council Advanced Grant to support a comparative project entitled “African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors and Port Cities in Transition” (AFRIGOS).
Abena Dove Osseo-Asare received the African Studies Association’s 2015 Herskovits Prize and the American Historical Association’s Pacific Coast Branch Book Award for _Bitter Roots: The Search for Healing Plants in Africa_ (University of Chicago Press).
Ato Quayson received the Urban History Association’s Best Book Prize (2013-2014) for Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and Itineraries of Transnationalism (Duke University Press).
Carina Ray received the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians’ Article Prize for “Decrying White Peril: Interracial Sex and the Rise of Anticolonial Nationalism in the Gold Coast,” which appeared in The American Historical Review.
Ben Talton was elected to the Executive Board of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora.