About Mensah Adinkrah, Ph.D.

Early Life in Ghana

Nkawkaw-Kwahu · Eastern Region

I grew up at Nkawkaw-Kwahu in the Eastern Region of Ghana, where I received my early education at Presbyterian Primary and Middle Schools. I graduated with distinction, an early indication of the academic discipline and commitment that would shape my later career.

I subsequently gained admission to St. Peter’s Secondary School, an all-boys Catholic mission institution widely regarded as one of Ghana’s premier secondary schools, noted for its rigorous academic standards and tradition of excellence. During my years there, I earned the nickname “Academic Giant” because of my repeated success in winning numerous book prizes during annual Speech and Prize-Giving Days. Although I protested the title vigorously as a young student, it endured, and former schoolmates still recall it with amusement.

I passed the General Certificate of Education Ordinary Level examinations with distinction and continued into the school’s two-year Sixth Form program. Upon successful completion of the Advanced Level examinations, I gained admission to the University of Ghana, Legon, where my formal journey into higher scholarship in sociology began.

Foundations at the University of Ghana

1980 Legon

Following my graduation from the University of Ghana with a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology (Honors), I was selected, on the basis of academic merit, to serve as a Teaching Assistant in the Department of Sociology. My one-year tenure provided invaluable opportunities to deepen my knowledge of the discipline and refine my scholarly interests. I had the privilege of studying under and working with distinguished sociologists such as Professors D. K. Fiawoo, Max Assimeng, Patrick Twumasi, E. H. Mends, Eugene Date-Bah, and D. K. Nortey.

I was also honored to join Eugene Date-Bah and Chris Abotchie as a research assistant on a United Nations-sponsored study of occupational environments in Ghana’s metropolitan cities. That experience introduced me to the rigors of large-scale survey research and laid an enduring methodological foundation for my later career.

Graduate Studies in Canada

1981–1983 Queen’s University

A year later, in 1981, I arrived at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada, to begin graduate studies in Sociology. There I studied under eminent scholars including Elia Zureik, Binky Tan, Terry Willett, Mary Morton, Laureen Snider, and Mary Maxwell. Professor Willett’s course on social control profoundly shaped my intellectual interest in military sociology and led me to the works of Morris Janowitz, Charles Moskos, and David Segal.

This period coincided with an era marked by repeated military coups in Africa, a circumstance that gave urgency and relevance to my academic interests. My master’s thesis examined political processes under military-dominated governance in Ghana. Because Queen’s University did not offer a doctoral program in Sociology at the time, I sought and gained admission to the Ph.D. program at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, USA.

Doctoral Studies at Washington University

1983–1988 St. Louis, Missouri, USA

I arrived at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, USA in 1983. There I studied under notable scholars such as William Pittman, Marvin Cummins, Pedro Cavalcanti, and distinguished African political scientist Victor Le Vine. Advanced coursework in deviance and social control further deepened my interest in military sociology. I immersed myself in the literature on military subculture, civil-military relations, and war, reading extensively on the Vietnam conflict and related scholarship.

My doctoral dissertation, Political Coercion in Military Dominated Regimes: A Subcultural Interpretation, analyzed military subculture, political coercion, and governance in postcolonial states. While at Washington University, I also taught courses in sociology, social problems, and juvenile delinquency at both Washington University and neighboring Harris-Stowe State College.

I was awarded the University Fellowship (1983–1986) and the Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (1987–1988) at Washington University — recognition that sustained my scholarly studies during those critical years.

Applied Sociology, Criminal Justice, and Social Service Practice

1988–1993 St. Louis, Missouri, USA

Following the completion of my Ph.D., I undertook extensive professional training and field experience within the American criminal justice and social service systems — experiences that would profoundly shape both my scholarship and pedagogical approach. I completed a six-month internship with the Missouri Department of Probation and Parole, where I received intensive exposure to probation supervision, offender rehabilitation, community corrections, and the operational dynamics of the parole system in the United States. This early immersion in applied criminological practice provided me with firsthand insight into the complex intersection of crime, punishment, rehabilitation, and social reintegration.

I subsequently served as a Social Science Technician with the Missouri Department of Child Support Enforcement before advancing to the position of District Supervisor I with the Missouri Department of Social Services in St. Louis, Missouri. In these capacities, I worked closely with economically marginalized families, vulnerable children, custodial parents, and individuals navigating the intricate structures of public assistance and family support systems. My work exposed me directly to the lived realities of poverty, family instability, bureaucratic inequality, child support enforcement, and the multifaceted challenges confronting indigent households in urban America.

Concurrently, I taught in an adjunct capacity with University College at Washington University in St. Louis, thereby integrating professional practice with university-level instruction at an early stage in my academic career. This rare combination of academic scholarship and frontline institutional experience enabled me to bridge theory and practice in ways that continue to distinguish my teaching, research, and sociological praxis.

Before departing for Fiji, I had already accumulated substantial experience within the American systems of probation, parole, child support enforcement, and social welfare administration — furnishing me with a sophisticated understanding of how social service institutions function, how structural inequalities reproduce poverty, and how vulnerable families negotiate state bureaucracies in pursuit of survival and social support.

This extensive background in applied social science practice continues to enrich my work as a teacher, researcher, and public intellectual. In the classroom, I draw extensively upon real-world cases, institutional experiences, and practical examples that illuminate abstract sociological and criminological concepts with unusual clarity and immediacy. My teaching is therefore informed not only by theoretical sophistication and scholarly rigor, but also by direct engagement with the everyday realities of social suffering, inequality, deviance, family crisis, and institutional intervention.

South Pacific Years: Building Criminology in Fiji

1993–1996 Suva, Fiji

In 1993, while accompanying my spouse during Fulbright-sponsored doctoral research in the South Pacific, I accepted an appointment to teach Sociology at the University of the South Pacific, a regional institution serving students from twelve Pacific Island nations. There I worked alongside outstanding Pacific scholars including Epeli Hau’ofa, Vijay Naidu, Nii-K Plange, Simione Durutalo, Michael Monsell-Davis, Ropate Qalo, and Stephen Ratuva.

I arrived in Fiji at a time when the nation was confronting rising rates of crime and delinquency. Assigned to teach a course on crime and deviance but lacking a suitable local textbook, I undertook the task of producing one. Employing methodological triangulation, I combined archival research, official records, interviews with criminal justice professionals, and primary fieldwork. I interviewed legal luminaries such as Supreme Court Justice Daniel Fatiaki, Nazhat Shameem, and Sekove Naqiolevu, while making extensive use of the Fiji Archives and University of the South Pacific collections.

Within a year, I published the 268-page volume Crime, Deviance and Delinquency in Fiji. The book was launched by Sir Moti Tikaram, then Chief Justice of Fiji, before an audience that included dignitaries and members of the diplomatic corps. A year later, I published Violent Encounters: A Study of Homicide Patterns in Fiji, a comprehensive analysis of 269 homicide cases over an eleven-year period.

I was retained by Fiji’s Ministry of Home Affairs as Consulting Criminologist and resource person for a South Pacific-wide conference on crime prevention and control. I was commissioned to edit the conference proceedings. During this period, I was interviewed widely in the national media, invited to speak before criminal justice agencies, and mentored students, many of whom later rose to prominence in the region.

Suicide Prevention Research in Fiji

1994 Viti Levu & Vanua Levu

By the time I arrived in Fiji, the nation was also grappling with elevated suicide mortality. My proposal to undertake a comprehensive study of the phenomenon secured university and government support. In the summer of 1994, I led a research team in conducting a nationwide attitudinal survey on suicidal behavior among residents of Viti Levu and Vanua Levu. The findings, together with policy recommendations for suicide prevention and control, were later published in monograph form.

Return to the United States

1997–2001 Metropolitan State University

Returning to the United States in 1996, I accepted a faculty appointment in 1997 at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minnesota. In addition to teaching, I was tasked with developing a criminal justice program to complement the existing law enforcement curriculum. My successful efforts contributed to the eventual creation of the School of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice.

In 2000, I received an Excellence in Teaching Award at Metropolitan State University — the first of two such recognitions, and a signal that research and pedagogy can reinforce rather than compete with each other.

Central Michigan University & the Fulbright

2001–Present Mount Pleasant

In 2001, I joined the School of Politics, Society, Justice and Public Service at Central Michigan University. In 2003, I was awarded the Fulbright African Regional Scholar Award to study female homicide victimization in Africa. My research focused on women targeted in witchcraft-related lethal assaults in Ghana. My 2004 article on witchcraft accusations and female homicide victimization was the first empirical study of the subject in Ghana. My subsequent article on child witch hunts was likewise pioneering.

In 2015, Berghahn Books published my monograph Witchcraft, Witches, and Violence in Ghana, the first book-length treatment of the subject since the classic works of Hans Debrunner and Margaret Field. In 2003, I also received an Excellence in Teaching Award at CMU, my second such recognition. I was named a finalist for CMU’s President’s Award for Research Excellence. In 2017, I was invited to serve as Associate Editor of the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology (2017–2020).

Since 2008, I have held the rank of Full Professor. Recognizing the alarming rates of suicide mortality in Africa, I have also initiated comprehensive research on suicide in Eswatini and Lesotho, resulting in several published manuscripts, with Lesotho research ongoing.

Scholarly Legacy

Firsts · Contributions · Heritage

My contributions to thanatology and Ghanaian criminology have opened new scholarly territory. I have made significant contributions to understanding “good deaths” and “bad deaths” among the Akan of Ghana, thereby adding a new dimension to scholarship on Akan mortuary beliefs and rituals. More broadly, I was the first scholar to publish empirical studies on homicide, femicide, spousal homicide, mariticide, and uxoricide in Ghana, as well as the first to publish empirical research on marital rape in the country.

Across continents and decades, my career has been guided by a commitment to rigorous scholarship, engaged teaching, mentorship, and the advancement of sociological and criminological knowledge in regions and subject areas too often neglected by mainstream inquiry.