Dr. Edem Adotey is a historian in the History and Politics Section of the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana where he co-teaches courses on African Historiography and Methodology, The Slave Trade and Africa, Colonial Rule and African Responses and History of Pan-Africanism at the Graduate level and Chieftaincy and Development at the Undergraduate level.
Dr. Adotey is a Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies and is also a member of the Historical Society of Ghana.
He holds a Ph.D. and an M.Phil. in African Studies (History) from the University of Ghana and BA (Hons) in History and English from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.
His primary research interest lies in African borderlands, particularly the Ghana–Togo border. Some of his published works have examined the intersection between borders and chieftaincy, electoral politics, nationalism, and Pan-Africanism.
"'9th May 2017 Is Our Day’: The Homeland Study Group Foundation and Contested National Imaginaries in Post-Independence Ghana,” Nations and Nationalism, 28 (2022): 662-679. DOI: 10.1111/nana.12810
Kwame Nkrumah: Visions of Liberation, Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne des études Africaines, (2022): 1-2. DOI: 10.1080/00083968.2021.2016845
“Multiplicity and Simultaneity in Ethnographic Research: Exploring the Use of Drones in Ghana,” African Affairs, 120, 480, (2021):445-459. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adab020
“Decolonising Governance: The State and Chieftaincy Conflicts on the Ghana-Togo Borderlands,” The Africa Governance Papers, 1, 1, (2021): 6-27.
“Operation Eagle Eye”: Border Citizenship and Cross-border Voting in Ghana’s Fourth Republic,” Journal of Borderlands Studies, (2020): 1-19. DOI: 10.1080/08865655.2020.1861551
“An Imaginary Line? Decolonisation, Bordering and Borderscapes on the Ghana–Togo Border,” Third World Quarterly, (2020): 1-19. DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2020.1813019
“A Matter of Apostrophe? Founder’s Day, Founders’ Day, and Holiday Politics in Contemporary Ghana,” Journal of West African History, 5, 2 (2019): 113–140
“Parallel or Dependent? The State, Chieftaincy, and Institutions of Governance in Ghana,” African Affairs 184, 473 (2019): 628-645. DOI: 10.1093/afraf/ady060
“‘International Chiefs’: Chieftaincy, Rituals and the Reproduction of trans-border Ewe Ethnic Communities on the Ghana–Togo Boundary,” Africa 88, 3 (2018): 560-78. DOI:10.1017/S0001972018000220
“Where Is My Name? – Contemporary Funeral Posters as an Arena of Contestation and (Re)Negotiation of Chiefly Relations Among the Ewe of Ghana and Togo,” History in Africa, Vol. 45 (2018): 59-69. DOI:10.1017/hia.2018.4
"Pan-Africanism, Boundaries, and Political Union: A Bottom-Up Approach,” Ibadan Journal of History, 6 (2018): 41-61.
“The Paradox of Colonialism: The German Colonial Project, Pan-Ewe Identity and Consciousness in Togo, 1884-1914”, in Wazi Apoh and Beatrice Lundt (eds.), Germany and its West African Colonies: “Excavations” of German Colonialism in Post-Colonial Times (Zurich: Lit -Verlag, 2013): 57-69