Akosua Adomako Ampofo is a Professor of African and Gender Studies at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, where she was the Director from 2001-2015. In 2015 she was a Visiting Senior Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence, a position she held at Concordia University, Irvine, California until May 2016. She has previously been a Junior Fulbright scholar (1994-5) as well as a New Century Fulbright Scholar (2004-2005), and a visiting scholar and invited speaker at numerous institutions and organizations around the world. In 2014 she was a Mellon Fellow at the Centre for African Studies at the University of Cape Town.

A feminist activist-scholar, and a strong advocate for social justice, Professor Adomako Ampofo notes that one of her sites for activism is the academy, especially the classroom—“if social consciousness happens among people who have been privileged to be educated, our nations can be transformed”. Her teaching, research and advocacy address issues of African Knowledge systems; Higher education; Reproductive Health; Identity Politics; Gender-based Violence; Women’s work; Masculinities; and Gender Representations in Popular Culture (such as music and religion). As an activist she has been involved in several academic and civil society organizations including the Ghana Domestic Violence Coalition and Netright, the Network for Women’s Rights, Ghana, The Women’s Caucus of the African Studies (US) Association and Sociologists for Women and Society, SWS, who awarded her the Feminist Activism award in 2010. She is co-president of the Research Committee on Women and Society (RC32) of the International Sociological Association, Founding Vice president of the African Studies Association of Africa (formed in 2013), and on the Board of several national, regional and international organizations.

Professor Akosua Adomako Ampofo holds a BSc in Architecture from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, and a Master of Science in Development Planning from the same University. Additionally, she holds a Post-Graduate Diploma in Spatial Planning from the University of Dortmund, Germany, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee.

She joined the University of Ghana’s Institute of African Studies in 1989 and was the first Head of the Centre for Gender Studies and Advocacy, CEGENSA, at the University (2005-2009), whose mandate included, among other things, the design of undergraduate curricular in gender and the formulation of sexual harassment and gender policies. She has been a two-time elected member of the University of Ghana Council. Professor Adomako Ampofo is a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences and an honourary member of the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa.