Dr. Anamzoya Becomes First Northerner in History To Head UG’s Department of Sociology
A former Chief Executive Officer of the Northern Development Authority has been appointed head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Ghana. Dr. Alhassan Sulemana Anamzoya who joined the University in 2005 as lecturer takes over from James S. Dzisah whose term ended in July, 2023.
By his appointment, Dr. Anamzoya becomes the first Northerner, the first Dagomba and the first practicing muslim to occupy the office since the Sociology Department was established more than seventy years ago.
Dr. Anamzoya in a phone conversation said for a university, imparting knowledge is not enough and so his immediate vision as he takes office is to make the department research oriented as that will open new frontiers of knowledge and cement UG’s reputation as a giant.
According to him, some of the problems Ghana is confronted with are social and so, it is imperative for the department to dig deep and come up with solutions to the challenges facing the country.
Dr. Alhassan Sulemana Anamzoya hails from Tolon in the Northern Region. He first joined the University of Ghana in 1997 as a student and obtained a Bachelor of Arts honours in Sociology in 2001.
Dr. Anamzoya will return to the school in 2003 and graduated in 2005 with MPhil in Sociology. In 2010, Dr. Anamzoya obtained his PhD in Sociology with a special interest in legal anthropology from the university of Ghana.
He will afterwards receive promotion to become a senior lecturer, a position he held until his recent elevation to the position of head of department. His recent research focuses on chieftaincy and law, migration, access to justice and micro analysis of the court system.
His publications are in the Legon Journal of Sociology, Research Review, African Review, and the Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law. He is a Postdoctoral Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies (AHP), and, has collaborated with: colleagues in the English Department of the University of Ghana on the Language Choice and Language Shift Among Migrants in Accra; with colleagues at the University of Hamburg and Bayreuth (both in Germany), and, LASDEL (Niamey) on African Courts and Institutional Development), and, with Colleagues in the Sociology Department and Department of Geography and Resource Development (University of Ghana), on Migrant Chiefs in Urban Ghana.
