Dr Charles Prempeh is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Cultural and African Studies, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi-Ghana. He holds a PhD degree in Theology and Religious Studies from the University of Cambridge (Wolfson College), United Kingdom, since 2021. He also holds a certificate in Public Engagement with Research (AHRC-TORCH outline course): organised by the University of Oxford, in 2021. Before joining Cambridge for his doctoral studies in October 2017, Prempeh undertook two years of doctoral coursework in interdisciplinary Social Studies at the Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR), Makerere University (Uganda) and taught undergraduate students for a semester.

He also holds a Master of Philosophy Degree in African Studies from the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon. In 2010, after completing his coursework, he was awarded the prestigious Agyeman Award for academic excellence. Prempeh holds a First-Class degree in African Studies from the University of Cape Coast in 2008. At the UCC, his undergraduate long essay was adjudged one of the best for the Department of African Studies and selected for display during the university’s opening day in 2009.

As an African Studies scholar, Prempeh’s research has an interdisciplinary dimension, incorporating areas such as gender, popular culture, religion, history, politics, education, philosophy, and cultural studies. He has published in these areas in prestigious journals including African Studies Quarterly, Journal of Religion in Africa and Religion Compass. His recent books are Charles Prempeh, Gender, Sexuality and Decolonisation in Postcolonial Ghana: A Socio-Philosophical Engagement and Nima-Maamobi in Ghana’s Postcolonial Development: Migration, Islam and Social Transformation (Bamenda/Cameroon: Langaa, 2022) and The Political Economy of Heaven and Earth in Ghana (Bamenda/Cameroon: Langaa RPCIG, 2023).

Prempeh is a fellow of the IFE Institute of Advance Studies and a former fellow of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC – 2016). He has held several leadership positions as president of the Student Union at the MISR, the Cambridge University Ghana Society (CUGS), currently a founding member and communications director of the Vacation Initiative for Science Africa (VISA), a registered Ghanaian- based NGO, and Director of Research for another registered Ghanaian-based NGO – Centre for Sustainable Livelihood & Development (CENSLID).

AFS 151: AFRICA IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD

Africa in the contemporary world is a course designed to help students conceptualise the terms "Africa" and "contemporary" and engage questions such as: What is Africa? What is contemporary? Does Africa mean physical or socio-cultural space, or both? Who are Africans? Does the term contemporary index that Africans have moved from one historical epoch to the other? What about the idea of the colonial moment? Has Africa moved away from its past? Has slavery and colonialism really ended? With this, students are to transcend the superficiality of "hows" to "whys" in understanding Africa's existential reality in geopolitics.