Public Scholarship
Interviews & Public Speaking Engagements
Kellogg Institute Panel – From Kellogg to Career: Building Future Scholars
To officially kick off its 40th anniversary year, the Kellogg Institute presented a panel on November 10, 2022 showcasing scholars who had formative experiences as students affiliated with Kellogg. Learn how Kellogg support and programming helped them hone their research skills and influenced their educational and career trajectories.
At the Cutting Edge of Ghana Studies
Gone too are the days when just a handful of scholars from the global north held sway over the field in journals of record and in elite African Studies programs in the US and UK. This sea-change has ushered in successive waves of vibrant research agendas pioneered by scholars who have continued to expand the purview of Ghana Studies and African Studies writ large. This panel brings together four early career scholars who will discuss what their work heralds for the next half-century of Ghana Studies.
Institute of African Studies Seminar Series
As a Fulbright scholar in Ghana, I gave a public lecture as part of the Institute of African Studies Seminar Series at the University of Ghana. I centered the history of IAS within the history of African intellectual decolonization.
Reconnecting Black Internationalism: New Directions in Historical Radicalism, April 9, 2021.
This conversation connects specific research projects to broader questions of how as intellectuals we untangle experiences that, at first glance, appear to be about intimate locality but are also tied to broader radical practices, internationalisms, and forms of power crucial to the present.
I began to hate my blackness | Identity Interviews | Bright Gyamfi, July 8, 2020
In 2017, I participated in an Identity Interview Series at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford. In the interview, I discuss the interplay between history, identity, and blackness. I argue that the demonization of Africa and blackness can affect the self-esteem of Africans and peoples of African descent. To address these issues, I posit that the teaching of Black history is vital in challenging this framework and exposing the uncontested hegemony of the colonial-racial order, one which seeks to entomb and erase the colonial nature that produced blackness.
Kwame Nkrumah and the fight for African Liberation, February 2020
In my talk, I used the life of Kwame Nkrumah to connect Ghana’s independence to the global struggle for Black liberation. The colonial racial order had established and maintained a hierarchy based on notions of whiteness and Black inferiority which demonized Africa and its peoples. As one of the first sovereign countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Ghana’s independence marked a significant milestone for Africa and the peoples of African descent throughout the world.
The Sound of Liberation: A Reflection of 400 Years after the Arrival of the First African Slaves, February 2019
In my speech, I linked Black liberation theology to the long history of the struggle for Black emancipation. Capturing the fears and hopes of enslaved Africans, I emphasized the importance of their agency to challenge the notion of enslaved people as passive historical actors.
“We did it all”: Africana Recognition Prayer Service, May 2016
In 2016, I served as the keynote speaker for the Africana Recognition Prayer Service at the University of Notre Dame. Drawing inspiration from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President Barack Obama, I spoke about the ways in which the hopes and sacrifices of our families carried us throughout our four-year journey throughout Notre Dame. I talked about how our diverse backgrounds and our shared hopes and uncertainties sustained us. These experiences provided avenues to connect our lived experiences to the history of the Black student movements in the 1960s and their fears, hopes, and demands, as they navigated the predominately white institutions.