BRIEF BIO

Akosua Adomako Ampofo is an Associate Professor at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon. She comes from a multidisciplinary background with a BSc in Architecture from the then University of Science and Technology (UST), Kumasi; a Post-graduate Diploma in Spatial and Regional Planning from the University of Dortmund, Germany; a MSc in Development Planning from UST; and a PhD in Sociology from Vanderbilt University in the US. Click here for summary of recent CV

Prof. Adomako Ampofo’s scholarship focuses on Higher Education; Gender, Power, Socialisation , Sexualities, and Constructions of Masculinities; and Race, ethnicity and Identity Politics. She has published numerous articles and technical papers on these themes and is currently completing two co-edited volumes (with Mary Esther Kropp Dakubu, Issues of Teaching and Learning in Ghana; and with Signe Arnfred, Paid by the Piper and Playing the Tune?Tensions, Challenges and Possibilities in African Feminist Research and Scholarship). Her recent publications include: “Phallic Competence: Fatherhood and the Making of Men in Ghana.” Culture, Societies and Masculinities. (in press, with Michael P.K. Okyerefo and Michael Perverah.);
“In My Mother's house: Mothering, Othering and Resisting Racism.” In Kinser, Amber (Ed.) Mothering in the Third Wave. Toronto: Association for Research on Mothering (Fall 2008); 'My Cocoa Is Between My Legs”; Globalization, Social Change And Sex As Work: Ghanaian Women In Accra, Kumasi And Abidjan. In Harley, Sharon (Ed.) Women's Labor in the Global Economy: Speaking in Multiple Voices. New Jersey, Rutgers University Press (The Book received the Letitia Woods Brown prize for the Best Anthology in 2007). A 2004 co-edited piece (with Josephine Beoku-Betts, Mary Osirim, and Wairimu Njambi) “Women’s and Gender Studies in English Speaking Sub-Saharan Africa: A Review of Research in the Social Sciences” which appeared in Gender and Society was cited among the top twenty-five most read articles for that journal for two consecutive months, according to the Gender & Society website.

Prof. Adomako Ampofo has received several grants and awards for her work and in 2004 was one of 21 women and men selected from Europe, Africa and Australiasia as Fulbright New Century Scholars where her own work looked at the relationships between the socialisation of children in Ghana and the ways in which children challenge or reproduce male privilege. Dr. Adomako Ampofo is a member of the African Gender Evaluators Network and has consulted for several national and international organisations such as the Ark Foundation; the Association of African Universities; Gender and Human Rights Documentation Centre; Ghana Family Planning Programme; Ghana Statistical Services; Ministry of Health, Ghana; SAWA (the Netherlands); Save the Children; Johns Hopkins University; UNAIDS; UNIFEM; UNFPA; UNICEF, WISE, and WHO. As an activist-scholar she is a member of several professional and civil society organisations including AAWORD; The African Studies Association, The Ghana Studies Council, The Network for Women’s Rights in Ghana, Netright; The Ghana Domestic Violence Coalition; Sociologists for Women in Society; and The Women’s Caucus of the African Studies Association of which she was Co-convenor for 2004-2005 and 2005-2006. She is also on the board of, and has reviewed for several international journals. Her civic contributions are reflected in her membership of boards such as the Ghana AIDS Commission; Action Aid International, Ghana; and the Christian Rural Aid Network and boards and committees of the Ghana Baptist Convention.