Rate My Professor Edmund Abaka

Edmund Abaka, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of History and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of History at the University of Miami, where he has served since 1997. A graduate of the University of Cape Coast in Ghana, he earned his Ph.D. in African History from York University and his Master of Arts in European History from the University of Guelph in Canada. Dr. Abaka teaches African and African Diaspora History courses at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, including HIS 201: History of Africa I. His academic career also includes roles such as Director of the Africana Studies Program and involvement with the Center for Global Black Studies at the University of Miami.

Dr. Abaka's research specializations include commodities and trade in pre-colonial West Africa, slavery and emancipation, the African diaspora, and sites of historical memory in Africa and the African diaspora. He served as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar at the University of Cape Coast in Ghana from 2016 to 2018, conducting research and lecturing in history. Key publications encompass Kola Is God’s Gift: Agricultural Production, Export Initiatives and the Kola Industry of Asante and the Gold Coast c. 1820-1950 (Ohio University Press, 2005); House of Slaves and ‘Door of No Return’: Gold Coast/Ghana Slave Forts, Castles and Dungeons and the Atlantic Slave Trade (University of Wisconsin Press, 2012); W. E. B. Du Bois on Africa, co-edited with Eugene F. Provenzo Jr. (2012); The Asante World, co-edited with Kwame Osei Kwarteng (2021); and Africa and the Second World War (2022). He has published articles such as “Eating Kola”: The Pharmacological and Therapeutic Significance of Kola Nuts (Ghana Studies, 1998) and Traders, Slaves, and Soldiers: The Hausa Diaspora in Ghana (Gold Coast and Asante) in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. Dr. Abaka received the Outstanding Graduate Program Director Award from the University of Miami Graduate School and has delivered public lectures on topics including the African diaspora’s influence on South Florida. His ongoing projects include Migration, Identity and Citizenship: The Hausa Diaspora in Asante and the Gold Coast, 1820-2020, and Slavery, Remembrance and Historical Memory: A Biography of Elmina Slave Castle and Dungeons.