Profile of Professor Ransford Edward Van Gyampo

Born on 31st March 1977, in Accra Ghana, Prof Ransford Edward Van Gyampo is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre for European Studies of the University of Ghana, with 16 years of teaching and research experience.

Prof. Gyampo holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Ghana and at Tufts University in Boston, USA. His research interest lies in the areas of Youth Empowerment and Development, Governance, Democracy, Electoral Studies, and Natural Resource Management.

Until recently, he was a visiting scholar at the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of South Florida, United States of America (USA). He currently serves as a Visiting Professor to the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom.

For 14 years, he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Governance Unit of the Institute of Economic Affairs leading a number of research projects and playing a key role in the IEA’s Socio-Economic and Governance Surveys.

For 10 years, Prof Gyampo also served as Coordinator of the Ghana Political Parties Programme, a programme that brought together the leadership of Political Parties with representation in Ghana’s Parliament to discuss issues of national importance in a non-partisan manner and to propose practical solutions to them.

He worked at the Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG) as Senior Research Fellow for two years and currently heads the Youth Bridge Research Institute. He is a member of Ghana’s Electoral Reforms Committee and played a key role in identifying the challenges of Ghana’s electoral processes and submitting electoral reform proposals to the Electoral Commission for the purposes of fine-tuning Ghana’s electoral system.

He is also a member of the Representation of the People’s Amendment Act (ROPAA) Consultative Committee, a committee set up by the Electoral Commission to research, consult and advise on the implementation of the law that mandates Ghanaians living abroad to vote in Ghanaian elections.

Prof Gyampo has more than 200 research works to his credit within his areas of research interest.

These have been published in internationally refereed journals across the globe as Books, Book Chapters, Book Reviews, Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles, Technical Reports, Monographs and Policy Briefs.

He is passionate about issues of governance and electoral politics in Ghana and Africa and commends extensively in these areas with a view to shaping how things are done in a manner that can improve Ghana’s governance landscape and help the maturation of Ghana’s democratization process.

Prof Gyampo is married with three kids and is a Christian from the Pentecostal faith