Michel Doortmont awarded ASA Service Award by the American African Studies Association

Michel R. Doortmont, coordinator of the research programme Society and Change in Northern Ghana: Dagomba, Gonja, and the Regional Perspective on Ghanaian History, has been awarded the 2019 ASA Service Award by the American African Studies Association (ASA). He receives the award together with his colleagues Jan Jansen (Leiden University), Dmitri van den Bersselaar (University of Leipzig) and John Hanson (Indiana University) in their role as editors of the scientific journal History in Africa: A Journal of Debates, Methods, and Source Analysis, “for their outstanding dedication to the ASA’s mission of encouraging the production and dissemination of knowledge about Africa, past and present.”

Michel Doortmont is reader in International Relations and African Studies at the University of Groningen. He is seconded (part-time) to the ASCL for the research programme about society and change in Northern Ghana. In this programme the ASCL collaborates with the University of Ghana at Legon and the University for Development Studies in Tamale and Wa, Ghana, as well as the University of Groningen, in the development of new research and capacity building in the field of regional history. The programme also includes a photographic documentation project, developed in cooperation with Noorderlicht Photography.

The ASA Board of Directors notes that, serving for almost a decade, the editors transformed History in Africa “into a peer-reviewed journal that not only engages a broad range of historical issues, but commands respect throughout the field.” The award will be presented during the African Studies Association Conference in Boston (MA) in November.