Authors

  • Nwando Achebe: (pronounced: Wan-do Ah-chě-bě; [pronunciation key: ě as in pet]), the Jack and Margaret Sweet Endowed Professor of History, is an award-winning historian at Michigan State University. She is founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of West African History; member of the African Studies Association’s (ASA) Board of Directors, and past co-convenor of ASA’s Women’s Caucus. Achebe received her PhD from UCLA in 2000. In 1996 and 1998, she served as a Ford Foundation and Fulbright-Hays Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. She was also a 2000 Woodrow Wilson Women’s Studies Fellow. Her research interests involve the use of oral history in the study of women, gender, and sexuality in Nigeria. Her first book, Farmers, Traders, Warriors, and Kings: Female Power and Authority in Northern Igboland, 1900-1960 was published in 2005 (Heinemann). Achebe’s second book, The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe (Indiana University Press, 2011), winner of three book awards—The Aidoo-Snyder Book Award, The Barbara “Penny” Kanner Book Award, and The Gita Chaudhuri Book Award—is a full-length critical biography on the only female warrant chief and king in colonial Nigeria, and arguably British Africa. Achebe has received prestigious grants from Rockefeller Foundation, Wenner-Gren, Woodrow Wilson, Fulbright-Hays, Ford Foundation, World Health Organization, and National Endowment for the Humanities.
  • Samuel Adu-Gyamfi is the first trained Social Historian of Medicine from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. He lectures in the Department of History and Political Studies of same university. His research interests include social histories of Africa, history of medicine in Africa, Health policy and politics of health in Africa, Indigenous Knowledge and Indigenous healing systems and Integration with Biomedicine among others.
  • Joe Alie is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of History and African Studies at the University of Sierra Leone (Fourah Bay College Campus). He holds the BA Hons and MA degrees in Modern History from the University of Sierra Leone and a PhD in African History and Certificate in African Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (in the USA). Professor Alie studied Education at Milton Margai Teachers College (now Milton Margai College of Education and Technology) and taught in various schools in Sierra Leone. His published textbooks include: A New History of Sierra Leone, Sierra Leone Junior Secondary Social Studies/Population Education I-III, and A Concise Guide to Writing College and Research Papers.
  • Hassoum Ceesay is a highly regarded Gambian historian and literary
    critic. He specializes in Gambian women’s history and has published a
    widely acclaimed book titled Gambian Women: An Introductory History
    (Fulladu Publishers, 2007). His second book titled Gambian Women:
    Notes and Historical Profiles (Fulladu, Publishers) came out in 2011,
    and has received positive reviews. He was features editor at the Daily
    Observer newspaper in Banjul and editorial writer from 1999-2006. He
    has contributed six entries on prominent Gambian women personalities
    in the Dictionary of African Biography edited by Emmanuel K.
    Akyeampong and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. published Oxford University
    Press. He currently works at the National Centre for Arts and Culture
    and is also Vice president of the Writers Association of The Gambia.
  • Toby Green is Senior Lecturer in Lusophone African History and Culture at King’s College London. Chair of the Fontes Historiae Africanae Committee of the British Academy, and Honorary Treasurer of the African Studies Association of the UK, Green was a recipient of a 2017 Philip Leverhulme Prize in History. Green’s major historical publications are the sole-authored works The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300-1589 (CUP, 2012); and, as editor or co-editor, Guinea-Bissau: Micro State to ‘Narco-State’ (Hurst/OUP 2016) and Brokers of Change: Atlantic Commerce and Cultures in Pre-Colonial Western Africa (OUP, 2012). He has also published articles in journals including Atlantic Studies, Journal of African History, Journal of Global Slavery, History in Africa, Past and Present, and Slavery and Abolition. Green has worked extensively with colleagues in West Africa and Brazil. He has co-organised conferences with institutions in Brazil, Sierra Leone and The Gambia, and in 2018 is co-organising conferences with institutions in Banjul, Kumasi, and Luanda. He has given lectures at research centres in Guinea-Bissau and Senegal, as well as at many universities in the USA. In June 2015 and April 2017 he co-organised  with Lucy Duran (SOAS – Music) two workshops funded by the British Academy bringing together historians and musicians from the Greater Senegambia region of West Africa. He has received grants funding various research projects as Principal Investigator from the AHRC, British Academy, British Library, the European Union, and the Leverhulme Trust.
  • Vincent Hiribarren trained as a History and Geography teacher and taught in France, China, Guinea, England and the United States. From 2008 to 2012, he undertook a PhD on the history of Borno, Nigeria at the University of Leeds. His first book A History of Borno: Trans-Saharan African Empire to Failing Nigerian State (Hurst and Oxford University Press, 2017) engages in the history of West Africa with a particular focus on the historical continuity of territories and borders of Borno, a region located on the Nigerian shores of Lake Chad. He is also interested in cartography not only the studying of maps but also their creation. You can have a look at his website to see some of his Digital Humanities projects.
  • Ben Kye-Ampadu holds B.Ed, MA and M.Ed Degrees from the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. He is a full-time senior tutor in History at a renowned institution, T. I. Ahmadiyya Senior High School, and a part-time lecturer at the College of Distance Education, University of Cape Coast. Currently, an Assistant Examiner of the West African Examination Council (WAEC), and the National Organizing Secretary, History Teachers Association of Ghana (HISTAG). A Public Speaker and the Resident School Counselor at his present place of employment.He is the author of, “ The Landmarks of African History for Senior High Schools,” and “ Notes on History of Ghana for Senior High Schools”.