Welcome Message from the Head of Department

I welcome you to the Department of History and Political Studies. Our Department is housed on the first floor of the Faculty of Social Sciences building with astute faculty with varied and sometimes common research and teaching interests. With a high sense of collegiality and student centred approach we have since 2009 produced graduates who are found in various sectors of the economy of Ghana and abroad. Our programmes; BA History and BA Political Studies at the undergraduate level are well sought for by students who apply to the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) every academic year. We also boast of credible graduate programmes that are research focused and also train executives/ professionals who would want to advance in their academic pursuits and careers. Our graduate programmes include; Master of Arts in Asante History, Master of Philosophy in History, Doctor of Philosophy in History and Master of Arts in Chieftaincy and Traditional Leadership. The others include Master of Public Administration and Master of Philosophy in Political Science. Our Doctor of Philosophy in Political Studies shall start in good time.

Our department has two student associations; they are the Historical Society of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (HISOK) and Political Studies Students Association (POSSA). These student associations work together to promote the interest of students and also support the Department's agenda of building solid contacts with our past students and also engagements with the corporate world. It is expedient to add that the Department has developed a synergistic relationship with industry. Over the years, our students have been supported to undertake internships during the second semester breaks to work with the corporate world. In this COVID year, we have been even much more resilient, all our third year students including second year students in History and Political Studies have signed on to this. There is a special coordinator who sees to monitoring the performance of our students. In the coming year, our lecturers shall also be posted from time to time to follow up and give reports on the performance of our graduate students in the corporate world during such corporate attachments. 

The Department is pushing toward making research and projects the focal point of our business. It is critical to add that; we are not only interested in recruiting individuals with terminal degrees in respective fields, we are very much interested in recruiting individuals with proven track record in research, publication and impactful research output. We are not oblivious of the fact that knowledge production in the Global South continues to trail behind that of the Global North. As a department, dovetailing our activities into the University’s vision means we should engender support to make sure that the Department shall be globally recognised as the Premier Centre of excellence in Africa for teaching in Science and Technology for development, which is seen in all our programmes and contents tailored to meet the vision of KNUST; to produce high calibre graduates with knowledge and expertise to support the industrial and socio-economic development of Ghana and Africa.

We also aim at dictating the pace concerning Ghana’s interest home and abroad. Over the years, the faculty of this department have been brave to play a role in advocacy and to challenge the status quo within Ghana’s Fourth Republic. We have done so through engaging presidents, vice presidents, sector ministers in private and public interactions to discuss the national agenda as well as the governance of this country. Several of the Department’s faculty have irked their names in the golden book of time and I know history shall absorb them including our great University, KNUST, “Nyansa pow, wo san no badwen ba”. 

In the coming year, we shall be more vociferous. We aim among others things to engage stakeholders in our special Thursday Nyanspo seminars, which is gaining extraordinary traction. Our agenda is to centre the national democratic discourse on “politics and development”. If we can influence the political actors to provide the public good, we can make Ghana become a better place. So we shall not only become academics in the classrooms, we shall also be mindful of our responsibility to the University community, national and international spheres. We believe that we must represent what intellectual freedom represents in higher institutions of learning. More so, we shall become public intellectuals for our light must shine to the world, for a city that is set on a hill can never be hidden.

I welcome you to the Department of History and Political Studies where you can find a better intellectual and physical space to nurture your potential, find collegiality and network to make KNUST, Ghana and the continent of Africa as well as the world; great by all standards.