Prof. Nana Akua Anyidoho, Director CSPS (2020-2025)

"After five rewarding years, I completed my tenure as Director of the Centre for Social Policy Studies (CSPS) on 31 July 2025. It has been a privilege to serve this centre and work alongside our faculty, staff, students, advisors and partners. Together, we’ve made important strides in the centre’s core mandate of teaching, research and advocacy. To CSPS faculty and staff – I appreciate your time, talent and hard work. To MRPP faculty outside of CSPS – we are grateful for your commitment to the centre, even when the tangible rewards have not matched the value of your contribution. To our students – your feedback has challenged us to do better and serve you more meaningfully. You’ve helped shape the Centre in important ways, and I hope you continue to see yourselves as partners in its growth. To the Management Board – thank you for the shared vision, steady guidance and thoughtful oversight. To our thesis examiners – thank you for the time, care, and intellectual generosity you've brought to safeguarding the quality of our graduate programmes. To all our partners – we are truly grateful for working with us on issues that matter."

Prof. Anyidoho is currently an Associate Professor at the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research at the University of Ghana. Her research is broadly in social policy and social development. Her work frequently explores themes of participation, inclusion, and empowerment by examining how marginalised social groups (in particular, young people and women) interact with and are impacted by social policy structures and processes. She is especially interested in higher education policy and its implications for graduate employment. 

Her publications are available on her website and ResearchGate.

Read more about the highlights of her tenure here

Professor Ama de-Graft Aikins, Director CSPS (2013-2015)

Professor Ama de-Graft Aikins served as the Director of the Centre for Social Policy Studies (CSPS) between 2013 and 2015. During her tenure as director she piloted cohort supervision for the CSPS master’s programme which improved completion rates; served as the University of Ghana (UG) Representative on the Steering Committee for the Partnership for African Social Governance Research (PASGR) Masters in Research and Public Policy (MRPP) Programme and contributed to the MRPP curriculum development; brought collaborative research funding to the centre from Grand Challenges Canada and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO); organised a conference on Ageing in Ghana and co-edited with Professor Nana Araba Apt - CSPS’s first director - proceedings of the conference as a special issue in Ghana Studies Journal (Ghana Studies, 2016, Vol 19, Issue 1). Following her tenure at CSPS, she served as Vice Dean of the School of Graduate Studies (2015 – 2016) and Dean of International Programmes (2016 – 2019). In 2015, she became the first female full professor of social psychology at UG.

Professor de-Graft Aikins 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. In addition to UG – where she is based at Regional Institute for Population Studies (RIPS) - she has held teaching and research positions at University of Cambridge, University College London (where she was a British Academy Global Professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies, between 2019 and 2023) and at the LSE, where she is currently a Professorial Research Fellow at the Department of Methodology.

Professor de-Graft Aikins’s research focuses on chronic illness representations, experiences and care in African settings. She also has a strong interest in arts and health, and how arts-based methods strengthen participatory approaches to community health development. She has taught, supervised, mentored and examined graduate students based in African, European, American and Australian universities on these research areas.

She is principal investigator of the British Academy seed-funded Chronicity and Care in African Contexts Project. The project examines how social and creative responses to chronic conditions can shape public engagement and care practices in continental and diaspora African communities. Her book, Selling Healing: Creative Arts and Health Communication in Ghana, published by Cambridge University Press in November 2025, is a major output of this project.

She is also co-investigator on two projects: the Wellcome Trust funded HABVIA Project, which seeks to co-produce heat adaption strategies in four vulnerable communities in Ghana and South Africa; and the Horizon Europe funded M-CARE project which seeks to improve the care of patients with multiple long term chronic physical and mental health conditions in Ghana, Kenya and Uganda.

Professor de-Graft Aikins has received a number of prestigious global awards and fellowships. In 2019 she was inducted into the US National Academy of Medicine as an international member “for research that contribute[s] to the development of unique interdisciplinary models to address Africa's chronic non-communicable disease burden”.

Prof. Abena D. Oduro, Director CSPS

Under Prof. Abena D. Oduro's leadership, CSPS officially launched the Master of Research and Public Policy programme in 2016 on behalf of the University of Ghana. The programme is one of eleven being run in African universities in collaboration with the Partnership for African Social and Governance Research (PASGR). She commended faculty within and outside CSPS for the contribution they have made towards the smooth running of the programme since its commencement in February 2016.

Abena D. Oduro is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Ghana. She served as a Co-Director of the Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa from 2018 to 2021. Her main areas of research are poverty and inequality analysis, gender and assets, unpaid care work, international trade policy and WTO issues. Her areas of specialisation include Gender and Assets, Poverty Analysis, Inequality Analysis, Unpaid Care Work, and International Trade Policy.