From May 26th to 28th, 2025, the University of Ghana proudly hosted the West African Women in Transregional History conference, bringing historians, political scientists, students, and scholars into intimate conversation across West Africa, Europe, and North America. The event explored the lives, networks, and legacies of West African women thinkers, activists, and organisers in the twentieth century, with particular focus on the region’s understudied histories of feminist and transregional collaboration.
Convened by doctoral researcher Aincre Maame-Fosua Evans alongside Professor Audrey Gadzekpo and Professor Samuel Ntewusu, Director of the Institute of African Studies, the conference responded to a growing imperative: to centre women not at the margins of national histories, but as key regional actors who helped shape the political and intellectual life of West Africa. It opened space to critically examine how nation-focused frameworks can obscure the broader solidarities and contributions of women across the sub-region.
The two-day event featured keynote addresses and panel discussions from some of the region’s most distinguished scholars, including Professor Akosua Adomako Ampofo, Emeritus Professor Takyiwaa Manuh, Professor Audrey Gadzekpo, Professor Akosua Darkwah, and Professor Mamadou Diawara, Director of the Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA). Their presence alongside emerging scholars fostered an atmosphere of intergenerational dialogue that was both intellectually generative and candid.
Conference sessions spanned a wide range of themes, from women’s organisational politics in colonial British West Africa to South–South feminist alliances. Discussions also foregrounded the financial and institutional challenges that researchers and scholars in West Africa face when working to uncover the lives of West African women, particularly given that so much of this history remains scattered in private collections in different countries, sometimes in multiple languages, and in many instances are altogether absent from government records.
Participants that attended expressed strong interest in seeing the conference become an annual fixture, and many praised its openness, rigour, and commitment to building a more inclusive historical record. Plans are already underway for a special issue based on selected papers, and discussions began in earnest around the development of a transregional West African women’s history archive at the University of Ghana. Practical considerations for such an archive were discussed with specialist Mrs Judith Opoku-Boateng of the Nketia Archives who offered insights on the institutional and logistical groundwork required.
The organisers extend heartfelt thanks to all attendees, contributors, and institutional supporters who made this event possible. This conference was made possible through the generous support of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), whose sponsorship contributed to its successful organisation.
For further information, please contact: aincre.evans@oriel.ox.ac.uk.
