Speaker Profile

Dr. Maame Adwoa Gyekye-Jandoh is currently a Senior Lecturer and a former Head of the University of Ghana’s Political Science Department, where she teaches/has taught undergraduate courses in Development Studies, Comparative Politics, Gender and Politics, and Political and Economic Reform and Democracy in Africa. At the graduate level she teaches Democracy and Governance in Africa, Government and Politics in Ghana, and Advanced Comparative Politics. Her expertise lies in Comparative Politics, with specialization in African and Ghanaian Politics, The Role of Civil Society in a Democracy, Civil Society-State Relations (in Ghana), Democratization, Gender and Politics, Migration both within and outside Africa, Citizenship and Migration, and Politics of the Developing World.

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She was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at The Amsterdam School for Social Science Research from January 2009 to December 2012, under the (ASSR)-NWO Program: Citizenship, National Canons and the Issue of Cultural Diversity: The Netherlands in Comparative Perspective, and an APSA-Africa Workshop Fellow from June to July 2009, under the theme: Electoral Systems, Political Behavior, and Democracy, at the University of Ghana. She has also worked closely and consulted with the KONRAD-Adenauer Foundation, the Parliamentary Service Board, Ghana, STAR-Ghana Foundation, Centre for International Development Issues Nijmegen based in Netherlands (CIDIN), the Danish Institute for Parties and Democracy (DIPD), COTVET, UN-AIDS (Ghana), and the Centre for Gender Studies and Advocacy, University of Ghana (CEGENSA). She is currently a Pan-African Gender Integration Platform Fellow under the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF)-funded CEGENSA-GCfGE (Global Centre for Gender Equality) Gender Responsive Malaria Advocacy and Policy Project. She was a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA-Ghana) from November 2022 to December 2023.

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Her current research interests include democratic prospects in Africa; electoral politics and democratic consolidation in Ghana; ethnicity and democracy in Africa; civil society and political extremism in Ghana; civil society and its role in a democracy; civil society-state relationships; the gender dimensions of policymaking in Ghana, and obstacles to women’s participation in politics in Ghana and Africa.

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She has published in scholarly journals such as the Contemporary Journal of African Studies, the Ghana Social Science Journal, Legon Journal of the Humanities, Springer Nature, Journal of Asian and African Studies, and the African Journal of Democracy and Governance, as well as chapters in edited books published by Sub-Saharan African Publishers, Brill, Palgrave Macmillan, Springer, CODESRIA, and a book chapter to be published by Oxford University Press in 2026. She is co-editor of a book on the History of Democracy in Africa to be published by Cambridge University Press in 2026.

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She received a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science (Honors) with Sociology from the University of Ghana, and M.A (Comparative Politics and American Politics) and Ph.D. degrees in Political Science (Comparative Politics) from Temple University in Philadelphia, PA, U.S.A.