Emmanuel K. Akyeampong, PhD, is Ellen Gurney Professor of History and Professor of African and African American Studies and Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Harvard University Center for African Studies at Harvard University. He is a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (UK). He is a co-founder and senior fellow of the International Institute for the Advanced Study of Cultures, Institutions and Economic Enterprise based in Accra, Ghana. At Harvard, Professor Akyeampong is the faculty associate for the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and a board member of the Du Bois Institute. As a former chair of the Committee on African Studies, he has been instrumental, along with Professor Gates, in creating the Department of African and African American Studies.

He is the author of several books and articles including Drink, Power, and Cultural Change: A Social History of Alcohol in Ghana, c.1800 to Recent Times (1996); and Between the Sea and the Lagoon: An Eco-Social History of the Anlo of Southeastern Ghana (2001). He served as co-chief editor with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., for the Dictionary of African Biography, 6 vols. (2012). Akyeampong has been a co-editor of the Journal of African History, of African Diaspora and serves on the editorial board of African Arguments.