Ghana government expert visits UAF

March 6, 2017

A scholar of Ghana's governance will give a free public lecture at 5 p.m. March 7 in Room 303 of the Gruening Building.

Jennifer Boylan will discuss “The Democratic Benefits of Centralized Institutions in Ghana," the topic of her 2016 Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Florida. Boylan is the UF Center for African Studies' programs and communications officer.

Starting in the 1400s, millions of West Africans were sold as slaves from Ghana's shores. Colonized by Great Britain, Ghana in 1957 became the first sub-Saharan country to gain independence. Several military coups and nondemocratic regimes followed, but Ghana has held consecutive free and fair elections since the 1990s.

Boylan is hosted by the Department of Political Science in the UAF College of Liberal Arts. The college, the largest of UAF’s academic units, comprises arts, humanities, social sciences and language disciplines across 20 departments..

CONTACTS: Jeremy Speight, assistant professor of political science, jspeight@alaska.edu, 907-474-6505; Naomi Horne, College of Liberal Arts, 907-474-6464, nehorne@alaska.edu

ON THE WEB: http://www.jennifercboylan.com/uploads/2/5/9/2/25928027/teaching_cv_dec2016.pdf, www.uaf.edu/cla

DOWNLOAD: A flier for Boylan's lecture