Professor Ama de-Graft Aikins is a professor of social psychology at the Regional Institute for Population Studies, University of Ghana and a visiting professor at the Department of Methodology, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She received her PhD in social psychology from the 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. In July 2023, she completed a four-year tenure as a British Academy Global Professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London.
Professor de-Graft Aikins’s research focuses on the social psychology of chronic illness, and on the psychosocial drivers of the chronic non-communicable disease (NCD) burden in continental and diaspora African settings. She also has a strong interest in arts-in-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 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 strongly committed to capacity building in graduate research and has taught, supervised, mentored and examined graduate students based in African, European, North American and Australian universities on the social science aspects of Africa’s 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.
adaikins@ug.edu.gh
Chronic illness representations, experiences and care; Community-based health interventions for chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs); Qualitative and creative methods in participatory health and social research; Arts in Health.
de-Graft Aikins, A. (2005). Healer-shopping in Africa: new evidence from a rural-urban qualitative study of Ghanaian diabetes experiences. British Medical Journal, 331, 737.
de-Graft Aikins, A. & Marks, D.F. (Guest Editors) (2007). Special Issue: Health, disease and healthcare in Africa. Journal of Health Psychology, 12(3) 387-559.
de-Graft Aikins, A, Boynton, P. and Atanga, L.L. (2010) Developing Effective Chronic Disease Prevention in Africa: insights from Ghana and Cameroon. Globalization and Health, 6:6.
de-Graft Aikins, A., Unwin, N., Agyemang, C. Allotey, P., Campbell, C and Arhinful, D.K. (2010). Tackling Africa’s Chronic Disease Burden: from the local to the global. Globalization and Health, 6:5.
de-Graft Aikins, A, Pitchforth, E., Allotey, P., Ogedegbe, G., Agyemang, C. (2012). Culture, ethnicity and chronic conditions: reframing concepts and methods for research, intervention and policy in low and middle income countries. Ethnicity & Health, 17(6), 551-56
de-Graft Aikins, A and Agyemang, C. (Eds) (2016). Chronic non-communicable diseases in low and middle income countries. Oxon: CABI Publishers
de-Graft Aikins, A and Apt, N.A. (Guest Editors) (2016). Ageing in Ghana: addressing the multifaceted needs of Older Ghanaians. Ghana Studies Journal. 19 (1), 35 – 201.
de-Graft Aikins, A and Koram, K. (2017). Health and Healthcare in Ghana, 1957-2017. In E. Aryeetey and R.Kanbur (Eds). The Economy of Ghana: Sixty Years after Independence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
de-Graft Aikins, A. (2018). Health psychology in Ghana: a review of the multidisciplinary origins of a young sub-field and its future prospects. Journal of Health Psychology. 23(3), 425-441.
de-Graft Aikins, A, Wikler D, Allotey, P.,Beisel, U., Cooper, M., Eyal, N. Hausman, D., Lutz, W., Norheim, O, Roberts, E., Vagero, Arrhenius, G., Jebari, K. (2018). Global Health and the Changing Contours of Human Life. International Panel for Social Progress Report. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
de-Graft Aikins, A, Dodoo, F., Awuah, R.B., Owusu-Dabo, E., Addo, J et al. (2019) Knowledge and perceptions of type 2 diabetes among Ghanaian migrants in three European countries and Ghanaians in rural and urban Ghana: the RODAM qualitative study. PLOS ONE 14(4): e0214501. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0214501
de-Graft Aikins, A., Kushitor, M., Boatemaa, S., Sanuade, O., Asante, P.Y., Sakyi, L., Agyei, F., Koram, K., Ogedegbe, G. (2020) Building cardiovascular disease (CVD) competence in an urban poor Ghanaian community: a social psychology of participation approach. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology. 1-22, DOI: 10.1002/casp.2447
de-Graft Aikins, A. (2020). ‘Colonial virus’? Creative arts and public understanding of COVID-19 in Ghana. Journal of the British Academy, Vol 8, 401 – 413
de-Graft Aikins, A (2021). A too familiar threat. New Scientist, 3327, 27 March2021.
de-Graft Aikins, A., Sanuade, O., Baatiema, L., Asante, P.Y., Agyei, F., Asah-Ayeh, V., Okai, J.A.O., Osei-Tutu, A., and Koram, K. (2021). COVID-19, chronic conditions and structural poverty: a social psychological assessment of the needs of a vulnerable community in Accra, Ghana. Journal of Social and Political Psychology. 9(2), 577–591, https://doi.org/10.5964/jspp.7543
de-Graft Aikins, A., Sanuade, O.A., Baatiema, L., Adjaye-Gbewonyo, K., Addo, J., Agyemang, C. (2023). How chronic conditions are understood, experienced and managed within African communities in Europe, North America and Australia: a synthesis of qualitative studies. PLoS ONE 18(2): e0277325.
Cornish, F., Breton, N., Moreno-Tabarez, U., Delgado, J., Rua, M., de-Graft Aikins, A., and Darrin Hodgetts, D. (2023) Participatory Action Research. Nature Research Methods Primer. 3:34, 1-14
Greenhalgh, T., & de-Graft Aikins, A. (2023). Qualitative inquiry and public health science: Case studies from the COVID-19 pandemic. In N. K. Denzin, Y. S. Lincoln, M. D. Giardina, and G. S. Cannella (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research (6th ed.)Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
2019 – Present: Chronicity and Care in African Contexts (seed funded by the British Academy)
2023 – present: Heat Adaptation Benefits for Vulnerable Groups in Africa (HABVIA) (funded by The Wellcome Trust)
Course Convenor: POPS702: Advanced Qualitative Research Methods