Dr Afua Twum-Danso Imoh
BA, MSc, PhD
Expertise
Afua's teaching centres on global childhoods and child welfare. Her research focuses on constructions of childhood, child socialisation and children's rights as well as problematising the Global North vs Global South binary.
Current positions
Associate Professor in Global Childhoods and Welfare
School for Policy StudiesUCU Equalities Officer
Human Resources
Contact
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Biography
Afua's interest in childhood stems from her MSc in Development Studies at the London School of Economics, where her dissertation explored the involvement of children in civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia. This research led her to develop an interest in the very notion of childhood and how it is understood by different societies, and the implications this has for dominant children’s rights and child protection discourses. As a result, she embarked on a Ph.D. programme at the Centre for West African Studies at the University of Birmingham where her research sought to elicit the perceptions of local communities on children’s rights, the constructions of childhood, and the socialization of children and explored the implications for the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in two communities in Accra, Ghana. Shortly after completing her Ph.D. in 2008, Afua assumed the position of Lecturer in the Sociology of Childhood at the University of Sheffield. During her time at Sheffield, her work started to challenge deficit understandings of childhoods in Africa, and she became engaged in debates problematising the Global North-Global South binary as it relates to childhood studies. In January 2020 Afua moved to the University of Bristol to assume the position of Senior Lecturer in Global Childhoods and Welfare in the School for Policy Studies where she has continued to develop her research interests relating to children's rights in Ghana, challenging deficit understandings of childhoods in Africa and problematising the Global North-Global South binary in childhoods and children's rights research. In August 2023, she was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor.
Afua holds a BA (Hons) in History and Sociology (University of Manchester), a MSc in Development Studies (the London School of Economics and Political Science), and a Ph.D. in African Studies (the University of Birmingham).
Research interests
Dr. Afua Twum-Danso Imoh’s research has, over the last 17 years, explored: constructions of childhoods; the intersections between dominant children’s rights and social and cultural norms; parent-child relations; and the impact of historical developments on constructions of childhood and child rearing practices. Much of this work was conducted in Ghana and Nigeria and was funded by external bodies. In particular, out of the 11 research and networking projects she has managed as Principal Investigator, nine have been funded by external funders. In more recent years one strand of her research has come to centre around problematising the binary between the Global North and the Global South and as part of that, she has sought to illuminate more holistic portrayals of childhoods in African contexts, in particular, by situating these within the context of both history and globalisation. In doing this, she has been motivated by a desire to challenge one-dimensional portrayals of the continent. Many of the findings from her research have been published. She is a series editor for the Palgrave Macmillan Study of Childhood and Youth Series and serves on the editorial boards of: Childhood, Children & Society, Sociedad e Infancias, Third World Quarterly and the Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies.
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
Children´s rights regimes and the ruins of the welfare state: is Argentina’s development a warning tale?
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School for Policy StudiesDates
04/08/2025 to 04/12/2025
A comparative study of gender construction and its impact on healthy relationships within English and Ghanaian schools
Principal Investigator
Role
Co-Investigator
Description
We aim to explore the construction of gender within schools and its implications for forming healthy relationships and gender-based violence (GBV) among young people (YP) aged 13-19 in England and…Managing organisational unit
School for Policy StudiesDates
09/03/2022 to 01/10/2022
Who Minds the Children? Clarifying the Role of Public Policies and Socio-Ecological Factors in Non-Adult Child Supervision in Low- and Middle-Income Countries?
Role
Collaborator
Description
Was part of a team that successfully obtained funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to undertake a project which seeks to further our understanding…Managing organisational unit
School for Policy StudiesDates
01/05/2020 to 30/04/2025
8121 SPOL. British Academy The Humanities and Social Sciences tackling the UK's International Challenges Programme. Afua Twum-Danso Imoh
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School for Policy StudiesDates
06/01/2020 to 31/07/2021
Foregrounding the Perspectives of West African Scholars in Childhood Studies Discourses
Principal Investigator
Description
Successfully obtained funding for a project which seeks to develop the writing capacity of early career childhoods studies scholars based at West African institutions through writing workshops and a mentoring…Managing organisational unit
School for Policy StudiesDates
01/04/2019 to 15/12/2019
Thesis supervisions
Publications
Recent publications
04/06/2025Conclusion
Critical Children's Rights Studies
Critical Children's Rights Studies
Critical Children's Rights Studies
Destabilizing images of the competent adult vs. the incompetent child in dominant children's rights discourses through the lens of Akan notions of personhood and social relations
Critical Children's Rights Studies
Children supervising children across low- and middle-income countries
Humanities & Social Sciences Communications
Critical Children’s Rights Studies: A Research Companion
Critical Children’s Rights Studies: A Research Companion
Teaching
Afua has been involved in the higher education sector in the UK for the past 23 years as a Graduate Teacher, Visiting Lecturer, Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, and Associate Professor, which is her current position.
Much of her teaching has focused on global childhoods, international children's rights policies, child-focused research methods, family life, and anthropological perspectives on global processes.
Afua became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK) in 2009 and completed the Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching (CiLT) at the University of Sheffield in 2011.
In the 2025-2026 academic year Afua will be convening and teaching the following units:
1) Constructing Childhoods (SPOL10023 - Year 1).
2)Childhoods in a Global Context (SPOL30089-Year 3).
Additionally, she delivers guest lectures on other units on an annual basis, including Contemporary Debates in Global Childhood (SPOL10024)and the dissertation units of MSc in Public Policy (SPOLM1010) and MSc Policy Research (SPOLM5100) respectively.
Beyond her teaching, Afua supervises undergraduate dissertation projects relating to the BSc Childhood Studies programme.
