Dzodzi Tsikata, Professor of Development Sociology, has been Director of the Institute of African Studies (IAS) at the University of Ghana since August 2016. Before this, she was based at the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) during which time she was Deputy Director and Director of the Centre for Gender Studies and Advocacy (CEGENSA) at the University of Ghana. She has a Ph.D in Social Science from Leiden University in the Netherlands. In a career spanning over 30 years, Tsikata’s teaching, research and publications have been in the areas of gender and development policies and practices; the politics and livelihood effects of land tenure reforms, large scale land acquisitions and agricultural commercialisation; and informal labour relations and conditions of work. She has extensive experience with leading multi-disciplinary and multi-national research projects, supervising student theses and examining post-graduate theses. She is on the editorial advisory board of Journal of Peasant Studies, the Canadian Journal of Development Studies, Feminist Economics and a member of the editorial collective of Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy and Feminist Africa. Tsikata is a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is the immediate past President of Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). Dzodzi Tsikata is also active in the leadership of several leading policy advocacy networks in Africa, including the Network for Women’s Rights in Ghana, Third World Network-Africa, and Centre for Democracy and Development, Abuja.
