Professor Ama de-Graft Aikins

Professor Ama de-Graft Aikins received her PhD in social psychology from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), completed postdoctoral training at the University of Cambridge and has held teaching and research positions at the LSE, University of Cambridge, University College London, and University of Ghana, where she am a tenured professor of social psychology. She was a British Academy Global Professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London, between 2019 and 2023.

Her research focuses on the social psychology of chronic illness in continental and diaspora African settings. She also have a strong interest in arts and health, the history of psychology in Africa and how both fields intersect with critical theory and African Studies. Her research draws on critical psychology principles, applies longitudinal mixed qualitative and arts-based methods in community settings, and is often embedded in interdisciplinary transnational projects on chronic disease risk, experiences and care. She is committed to capacity building in graduate research and have taught, supervised, mentored and examined graduate students based in African, European, American and Australian universities on social science aspects of Africa’s chronic non-communicable disease (NCD) burden.

She is currently principal investigator for the British Academy seed-funded Chronicity and Care in African Contexts Project. The project examines how social responses to chronic conditions can shape public engagement and chronic care interventions in continental and diaspora African communities. A major output of this project is my book, Selling Healing: Creative Arts and Health Communication in Ghana, which will be published by Cambridge University Press in Spring 2025.

Research interests

• Social psychology of chronic illness in continental and diaspora African settings.
• Community-based participatory health research
• Qualitative methods
• Arts and Health

Expertise

Applied Social Psychology, Chronic Conditions, Global Health, Qualitative Methods