About Me
Academic Profile
Ph.D. in History, Northwestern University, 2023
M.A. in History, Northwestern University, 2018
MSc in African Studies, St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, 2017
B.A. in Political Science and History (Honors), University of Notre Dame, 2016
In 2019, I was named the inaugural winner of the Ghana Studies Association’s Conference Paper Prize for Emerging Scholars at the African Studies Association Conference in Boston. The following year, I received the Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship and the Fulbright Fellowship to support my research work in Grenada, Suriname, Ghana, Senegal, and England. In the Fall of 2021, I published my first article in the Journal of African American History, the oldest and leading scholarly journal in the field of African American history. The following fall, I published my second article in the African Studies Review, the flagship scholarly journal of the African Studies Association.
Research
My research is not simply an intellectual exercise; it is and remains a deeply personal project. Here is an interview I conducted at the University of Oxford, where I spoke about what inspires my research.
My first book project,“Embers of Pan-Africanism: Nkrumahist Intellectuals and Decolonization 1960-1980,” examines Ghanaian intellectuals who worked to transform and radicalize the study of Africa in academic and intellectual centers around the Atlantic. The project weaves together local and transnational histories around the Atlantic based on more than four years of archival research and oral interviews in Ghana, Senegal, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It contends that networks of intellectuals produce and advance radical scholarship even if their country of origin opposes it. Beginning with the military overthrow of President Kwame Nkrumah in 1966, I examine how Ghana became increasingly hostile to intellectuals close to Nkrumah.
Ayi Kwei Armah, Prominent Ghanian Writer, Popenguine, Senegal
Consequently, many Nkrumah-inspired scholars found intellectual homes abroad, including at the UN-funded development institute IDEP (Institut Africain de Développement Economique et de Planification) in Dakar and in American universities and colleges. These academics helped shape the development of Black Studies in the United States. Their efforts to stimulate a global movement of Black consciousness extended into the Caribbean and South America as well, reaching places like Grenada and Suriname.
In exile, these Nkrumah-influenced scholars maintained firm ties with their counterparts who remained in Ghana. Their actions and seminal ideas also reimagine Africa and its diaspora as a terrain of unified political action and intellectual research. Their stories offer insight into the circulation and influence of Black internationalist thought and organizing within and outside of Africa. My project, thus, shifts historiographical attention from the Ghanaian state as the custodian of radical politics to transnational networks of Ghanaian intellectuals whose thought and initiative furthered radical Black internationalism and forged innovative approaches to African Diaspora Studies through the 1970s and well into the 1980s. Nkrumah’s overthrow marked a moment of grass-roots transformation and the advent of a new field rather than heralding a period of intellectual decline and stagnation. My work uses a ground-level study of transnational Black radicalism to enrich the sociology of knowledge production.
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Field Research Sites: Ghana, England, Senegal, Grenada, Trinidad & Tobago, Brazil, France, and Suriname
Collaborative Engagements
Augmented Curiosities: Virtual Play in African Pasts and Futures
Black Stars Makarapa (2010) - South Africa
This makarapa was hand-crafted from a hard hat as fan memorabilia for the Ghanaian National Soccer team during the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.
A makarapa is a hand-cut and hand-painted hard hat worn by sports fans. Originally used as protection from projectiles thrown during matches, the articles have become prevalent representations of South African sports culture.
The word makarapa means "scrapers", referring to rural workers who commute to cities and "scrape" a livelihood in mining and construction industries. The laborers returned home wearing the hard hats - which were eventually referred to as makarapas.
Chasing the Ball: Reflections on Football and African Identity
The exhibition “Chasing the Ball” explores the contradicting themes in the world of football such as citizenship, racism, human rights, corruption, and national unity.