Dr. Joyce De-Graft Acquah is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Cape Coast (UCC), Ghana, and an eminent member of the Central Regional Peace Council. She is a peace and conflict scholar-practitioner whose work focuses on urban violence, conflict prevention, post-conflict governance, and gender-responsive peacebuilding with a regional emphasis on West Africa. Her research combines qualitative and quantitative conflict analysis with grounded fieldwork in high-risk and politically sensitive settings.
She holds a PhD in International Conflict Management from Kennesaw State University, USA, where she was appointed Part-Time Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies following her doctoral studies. Dr. Acquah also holds an MPhil in Peace and Conflict Transformation from the Arctic University of Norway and an MA in Development Studies from the University of Ghana. In addition to her work on urban violence, she has conducted sustained research on refugees, forced displacement, and post-conflict livelihoods in Ghana and the wider region. She has served as a national consultant for UNIDO and contributed to UNHCR- and FAO-related initiatives on refugee integration, livelihoods, and social cohesion. In 2023, she was an African Guest Researcher Scholar at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, Sweden.
Before joining academia, Dr. Acquah worked in grassroots development and research as a district facilitator with the USAID-funded Community School Alliances Project, where she employed participatory community-mobilisation approaches to promote good governance and improve primary school enrolment. Her academic excellence and leadership have been recognised through competitive scholarships and research grants, including the Norwegian Government Quota Scholarship and the PEO International Peace Scholarship (USA), as well as support from the Centre for Environment and Development (Norway) and the Canadian Bureau for International Education. Her recent work has been supported by the International Peace Research Association (IPRA) Foundation Peace Research Grant and the Journal of International Women’s Studies Fellowship.
As a peace practitioner, she is actively engaged in conflict prevention, mediation, and political dialogue in Ghana, working with state and non-state actors to strengthen evidence-based peacebuilding and violence-prevention initiatives.
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