Stephan Miescher - MIASA - Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa

Stephan F. Miescher is a Professor of History and former Department Chair at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in the United States. Born in Switzerland, he was educated at the University of Basel (MA) and at Northwestern University (PhD). He is a historian of West Africa with a focus on Ghana and has research interests in the history of development, technology, and the environment, in gender and masculinities, and in oral history. He is the author of two monographs and eight edited volumes/special journal issues, and as well as numerous articles and book chapters. With Akosua Adomako Ampofo, he served as co-editor of Ghana Studies. With R. Lane Clark, he completed the documentary film Ghana’s Electric Dreams.

MIASA Project: Ghana's Inland Ocean: Ecologies and Infrastructures of Volta Lake

As the first historical monograph about Volta Lake, Ghana’s Inland Ocean explores the lake’s changing ecology, scientific knowledge production, fishing industry, and transport. The book will show how a newly independent African country, drawing on resources available through international organizations, established research centers to study this manmade lake. It examines how local communities experienced this vast lake, how they remember its opportunities, and how they managed its challenges. Although planners envisioned a system of state operated lake transport, small-scale entrepreneurs took the initiative and enabled most crossings. Volta Lake was a co-production of the post-colonial Ghanaian state and people who lived in the area, often with local people playing a pivotal role in shaping lake outcomings. I am collaborating with R. Lane Clark who is working on a documentary film that will accompany the book.

Selected publications

“Ghana’s Volta River Project: The Global Entanglements of the Akosombo Dam,” in Dam Internationalism: Rethinking Power, Expertise, and Technology in the Twentieth Century, ed. Vincent Langendijk and Frederik Schulze (London: Bloomsbury, 2024), 173-193
A Dam for Africa: Akosombo Stories from Ghana (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2022) (Winner of the 2023 Sidney M. Edelstein Prize from the Society for the History of Technology; finalist for the 2024 Best Book Prize from the African Studies Association of the UK and for 2024 Hagley Prize in Business History, sponsored by the Hagley Museum and Library and the Business History conference)
“Ghana’s Akosombo Dam, Volta Lake Fisheries & Climate Change,” Daedalus 150, no. 4 (2021): 124-142
Modernization as Spectacle in Africa, co-edited with Peter J. Bloom and Takyiwaa Manuh (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014)
Africa After Gender, co-edited with Catherine M. Cole and Takyiwaa Manuh (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007)
Making Men in Ghana (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005)

Personal website

Institute:
University of California at Santa Barbara

Year:
2024/2025