Prof Dodoo awarded British Global Professorship

Ghana Athletics Association (GAA) President, Professor Francis Dodoo is to join the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science in Oxford’s Department of Sociology and Nuffield College as one of three new British Academy Global Professors at the University of Oxford.

The British Academy annually funds 10 Global Professorships in the UK, seeking to attract experienced international academics to contribute to UK higher education while conducting research at British universities.

Professor Dodoo, who joins the centre in January 2021, received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.

He has worked in the areas of gender, power and sexual decision-making; demographic and health outcomes associated with urban poverty; inequality issues among Africans in the diaspora; and on building research capacity in Africa.

Professor Dodoo’s current focus is on studying how bride-wealth payment—long considered a mechanism for consolidating marriage in sub-Saharan Africa—affects the normative reproductive autonomy of married women on the continent.

Professor Dodoo will be affiliated with the University where he will work with Professor Melinda Mills, Director of the Centre, on collecting data and strengthening genomic, demographic and health research in Africa, and Dr. Ridhi Kashyap on comparing Africa’s bride-wealth with India’s dowry traditions.

Professor Francis Dodoo said: ‘After the last decade or so focusing on institutional building, including recent service as Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research, Innovation and Development [at the University of Ghana] I am delighted at the opportunity to return to a full-time focus on my research.