SPLA : Portal to cultural diversity

Akosua Adomako Ampofo

  • Akosua Adomako Ampofo
© Institute of African Studies
Lecturer, Chief executive officer (ceo)
Principal country concerned : Column : Architecture
Ghana

Professor Akosua Adomako Ampofo is the Director of the Institute of African Studies. She attended Aburi Girls' Secondary School, and holds a BSc in Architecture from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, from where she also holds a Master of Science in Development Planning. Additionally, she holds a Post-Graduate Diploma in Spatial Planning from the University of Dortmund, Germany, and a PhD in Sociology from Vanderbilt University in the US. She joined the University of Ghana (UG) in 1989 as a Research Fellow in the Institute of African Studies, was promoted to Senior Research Fellow in 1996, Associate Professor in 2003, and Professor in 2010.
 
Professor Adomako Ampofo was the First Head of the Centre for Gender Studies and Advocacy, CEGENSA (August 2005-Deember 2009), whose mandate included, among other things, the design of undergraduate curricular in gender and the formulation of a sexual harassment policy. She has been a 2-time elected member of the University Council (2005-2007 and 2007-2009) and served on numerous Boards and Committees of the University, including the Board of the School of Research and Graduate Studies (2004-2006), the Academic Board (2002 to date); the Business and Executive Committee (2010 to date); the Physical Development Committee (2006-2009); the Appointments Board (incl. UG Business School, UG College of Health Sciences, Faculty of Arts); Faculty Boards of Arts and Social Sciences, as well as many ad-hoc committees and search parties. From 2000-2004 she was a Tutor in Volta Hall.
 
Research and Teaching
Professor Adomako Ampofo continues to teach at both the graduate and undergraduate level, including one of the University's five required undergraduate courses, Introduction to African Studies. Her teaching, research and advocacy have addressed issues of African Knowledge systems; Higher education; Reproductive Health; Identity Politics; Gender-based Violence; Women's work; Masculinities; and Gender Representations in Popular Culture (music and religion). She was a member of the Pathways of Women's
 
Empowerment consortium, WE-RPC; (http://www.pathwaysofempowerment.org/). Selected recent publications include:
"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, 2010, Eds. with Signe Arnfred); Knowledge Transmission in Ghana: Research Review Supplement 19. Legon, Institute of African Studies (Eds. with Mary Esther Kropp Dakub, 2009); "Phallic Competence: Fatherhood and the Making of Men in Ghana" (2009, with Michael P.K. Okyerefo and Michael Perverah in Culture, Societies and Masculinities); "Race, Gender and Global Love: Non-Ghanaian Wives, Insiders or Outsiders in Ghana?" (2008, with Akosua Darkwah in International Journal of the Family 34(2): 187- 208); Researching African Women and Gender StudiesNew Social Science PerspectivesSpecial Issue African and Asian Studies. 7(4): 395-421 (2008, co-edited with Josephine Beoku-Betts and Mary Osirim).
Adomako Ampofo's work with Asiedu on women in popular music in Ghana, from which they have published several papers, culminated in a song competition that eventually produced three (empowering) songs about women including a music video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRP_hzEmQv8). The project examines and interrogates the constructions of women in popular music.
 
Professor Adomako Ampofo has been invited to lecture, or has been a visiting Professor/Scholar at Universities and Centres around the world, including the Council for Social Science Research in Africa's (CODESRIA) Gender Institute, and the African Population Policy and Health Research Centre in Nairobi. She has been a Visiting Fellow of the African Gender Institute, UCT (1998) and the Nordic Africa Institute (2006). In 2007 she delivered the Emily Mumford Distinguished Lecture in Medical Sociology at the University of Tulsa; in 2008 she was a member of the Presidential Panel on Human Rights in Africa at the Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association held in San Francisco; and in 2010 she was a guest of the Council of Culture in Egypt (SCC) and presented at an international conference held in Cairo on "The Interaction of African Cultures in the Age of Globalization". Professor Adomako Ampofo regularly presents her work at professional meetings including those of the African Studies Association, International Sociological Association and sometimes the Sociologists for Women in Society. More informally, she also enjoys speaking on youth platforms in churches, the media, and with Civil Society organisations.
 
Grants and Awards
Professor Adomako Ampofo has received several grants and awards for her work: from the Association of African Women for Research and Development (AAWORD), CODESRIA, DAAD, Dfid (under the Women's Empowerment, Research Project Consortium); IDRC (PI: Professor Dzodzi Tsikata), the National Science Foundation, the Population Council, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, UNFPA, Unifem, the West African Research Council (WARC), WHO, and not least the University of Ghana. She has been a Junior Fulbright Scholar (1995-1997) and a recipient of a Rockefeller Bellagio Team residency (2002, with Professor Takyiwaa Manuh). In 2004 she was one of 21 women and men selected from Europe, Africa and Australiasia as a Fulbright New Century Scholar. Her work under this one-year progamme looked at the relationships between the socialisation of children in Ghana and the ways in which they challenge or reproduce male privilege. In 2010 Professor Adomako Ampofo was awarded the Sociologists for Women in Society Feminist Activism award.
 
Professional Associational Life and Community Service
As an activist-scholar Professor Adomako has been, or is, a member of several professional and civil society organisations including the Association of African Women for Research and Development (AAWORD); The African Studies Association (ASA); two of the ASA's cognate organisationsâ€"The Women's Caucus of the African Studies Association of which she was Co-convener from 2004 to 2006, and The Ghana Studies Association; The African Gender Evaluators Network; The Gender and Women's Studies (for Africa) Network; The International Sociologists Association of which she is co-president elect, together with Professor Josephine Beoku-Betts, (Florida Atlantic University), of the Research Committee on Women and Society; The Population Association of America; Sociologists for Women in Society; The Network for Women's Rights in Ghana, Netright; and The Ghana Domestic Violence Coalition.
Editorial work forms an important part of her academic service and Professor Adomako Ampofo serves on the boards of journals such as Culture, Societies and MasculinitiesFeminist AfricaGender and Society, and the Research Review. She has also reviewed for journals such as African Journal of Reproductive HealthAfrican Studies ReviewJournal of Health and Social BehaviourLegon Journal of International AffairsSocial Science and MedicineUG Social Studies Journal andWomen's Studies International Forum. She is currently co-editor (with Stephan Miescher, UC Santa Barbara) of Ghana Studies, published by the University of Wisconsin press. Professor Adomako Ampofo has served on scientific committees and review panelsâ€"examples are the 2008 Ghana National HIV-AIDS Research Conference; NUFU; the African Humanities Programme; and the Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa Fellowship.
 
She is also an Advisory Board Member of the African Humanities Fellowship Programme and the Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa Fellowship Program's Advisory Board. Some of the other Boards/Committees of which she is a member of include: the Centre for African Studies at the University of the Free State; Steering Committee of the African Heritage Initiative at the University of Michigan; the Transatlantic Roundtable on Religion and Race.
Professor Adomako Ampofo has consulted for or been a resource person for national and international organisations such as the Ark Foundation; the Association of African Universities; Emory University; The Gender and Human Rights Documentation Centre, Ghana; Ghana Family Planning Programme; Ghana Statistical Services; Ministry of Health, Ghana; SAWA (the Netherlands); Save the Children, Ghana; Johns Hopkins University; UNAIDS; UNIFEM; UNFPA; UNICEF; WISE, Ghana; and WHO. Her civic contributions are also reflected in current and previous membership of boards such as the Ghana AIDS Commission; Action Aid Ghana; the Christian Rural Aid Network, and the Ghana Institute of Linguistics, Literacy and Bible Translation (where she serves as a University of Ghana institutional representative).
 
 Source - Institute of African Studies
 University of Ghana

Partners

  • Arterial network
  • Ghana : Media Line

With the support of