Ama de Graft Aikins

Professor Ama de-Graft Aikins is Dean of International Programmes and Professor of Social Psychology at the Regional Institute for Population Studies, University of Ghana (UG). She received her PhD in Social Psychology from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and completed postdoctoral training at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on experiences and representations of chronic physical and mental illnesses and on Africa's chronic non-communicable disease (NCD) burden. She has led, and participated in, interdisciplinary NCD research projects based in Ghana, Europe and the US with colleagues from UG, University of Amsterdam, New York University (NYU) and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). She has conducted commissioned research in health and NCD policy for organizations including the Ghana Health Service (GHS) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Her research has produced over 100 peer-reviewed scholarly publications and she has presented her research at over 100 conferences, high level meetings and university seminars in 24 countries. Professor de-Graft Aikins teaches graduate courses in Psychology, the Philosophy of the Social Sciences and Qualitative Research Methods at UG. She has supervised over 40 masters theses in Social Psychology, Social Policy, Public Health and Population Studies at UG, LSE, LSHTM, NYU and the University of Sussex. She has supervised 10 PhD students in Population Health and Public Health at UG, University of Amsterdam and Australian Catholic University. She has contributed to the development of models for training graduate students and early career researchers in the social sciences and humanities in Africa through her association with the British Academy (BA), the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU), the African Studies Association, UK (ASAUK) and the LSE African Initiative. She is a visiting senior fellow at the LSE and University College London (UCL) and a fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.