By Ernest Nutsugah, GNA
Accra, Oct. 22, GNA – Professor Ato Quayson, a scholar of English and Interdisciplinary Studies at Stanford University, was on Wednesday inaugurated as the fifth Kwame Nkrumah Chair in African Studies at the University of Ghana.
The appointment is intended to strengthen research, promote intellectual exchange between scholars, students and faculty, and deepen understanding of Africa and its diaspora.
Prof. Nana Aba Appiah Amfo, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, said the ideals of Ghana’s first President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, remained relevant in an era of Artificial Intelligence and geopolitical change.
She said Africa must move beyond being a subject of external research and a consumer of knowledge produced elsewhere, and ensure that scholars on the continent contributed meaningfully to global knowledge.
“…We need strong African intellectual voices; we need scholarship that is grounded in our experiences, engages critically with our issues and institutions and contributes to the wider world of ideas.
“…We must continue to develop the intellectual capacity and confidence to interpret our own realities, interrogate dominant assumptions, and contribute meaningfully to global scholarship,” she said.
Prof Amfo commended previous occupants of the Chair and encouraged Prof Quayson to build productive relationships and help students discover new ideas.
Prof Quayson delivered his inaugural lecture, titled “Reflections on a Life of Scholarship Leavened with Random Curiosity”, at the ceremony attended by partners and members of the University community.
He outlined plans to promote intellectual discussions among students, support career planning and mentor graduates seeking to pursue careers in academia.
“People are our most important infrastructure and it is them that I want to build,” he said, advising students to make good use of learning opportunities.
The Kwame Nkrumah Chair in African Studies was established in 2007 through a partnership between the University of Ghana’s Institute of African Studies (IAS) and AngloGold Ashanti Limited to deepen research and learning on Africa’s history, development trajectories and challenges, as well as those of its diaspora.
The Chair also honours Dr Nkrumah’s commitment to academic excellence and his role in establishing the IAS, the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Encyclopedia Africana project as part of his decolonisation and Pan-African agenda.
Prof Quayson earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with First Class Honours in English and Arabic from the University of Ghana in 1989 and a PhD in English from the University of Cambridge in 1995.
He began his academic career as a postdoctoral scholar at Wolfson College, Oxford, from 1994 to 1995 before returning to Cambridge as a lecturer.
Prof Quayson later joined the University of Toronto as Professor of English and founding Director of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies, serving until 2017.
He was appointed University Professor in 2016 and became Professor of Postcolonial Studies at New York University in 2017.
In 2019, he joined Stanford University, where he served as Chair of the Department of English from 2021 to 2024.
In January 2024, he became the inaugural Chair of the Department of African and African American Studies.
His book, “Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism”, won the Urban History Association Prize in the non-North American division in 2015.
The publication was also named by The Guardian among the 10 best books on cities in 2014.
Prof Quayson served as President of the African Studies Association from 2019 to 2020 and is the founding editor of ‘The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry’.
Prof Quayson is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, elected in 2013; the British Academy, elected in 2019; and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, elected in 2024.
He was also elected a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2026.
He is married and has four children.
GNA
Edited by Kenneth Sackey
Reporter: Ernest Nutsugah
[email protected]