Rate My Professor Stephan F. Miescher

Stephan F. Miescher is Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and former Chair of the History Department. Born in Switzerland, he earned his MA from the University of Basel and his PhD from Northwestern University. A historian of nineteenth- and twentieth-century West Africa with a focus on Ghana, Miescher's research explores gender and masculinities, development and technology, Africa's environments, sexualities, and the practice of oral history. His first monograph, Making Men in Ghana (Indiana University Press, 2005), examines the history of masculinities through life histories of eight Ghanaian men. His recent book, A Dam for Africa: Akosombo Stories from Ghana (Indiana University Press, 2022), analyzes Ghana's largest development project, the Akosombo Dam, alongside the documentary film Ghana’s Electric Dreams (2019), directed by R. Lane Clark. Miescher has edited numerous volumes, including Africa After Gender? (2007), Modernization as Spectacle in Africa (2014), and Gender Imperialism and Global Exchanges (2015), as well as special issues of Ghana Studies and Media+Environment. His articles appear in journals such as Journal of African History, Water History, and Daedalus.

Miescher has held key academic roles, including Co-Convener of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar on Energy Justice in Global Perspective (2017-2019), Co-Director of the University of California Multicampus Research Group in African Studies (2008-2012), and Co-Editor of Ghana Studies (2008-2013). He will serve as Senior Research Fellow at the Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa in 2025. His contributions have earned the 2023 Sidney M. Edelstein Prize from the Society for the History of Technology for A Dam for Africa, with the book also a finalist for the 2024 Hagley Prize in Business History and the African Studies Association-UK Best Book Prize. Miescher received an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship (2007-2008) and a UC President’s Fellowship in the Humanities (2010-2011). He is also affiliated with the Department of Feminist Studies at UCSB and continues research on the ecologies and infrastructures of Ghana’s Volta Lake.