New Assistant Professor at the Centre of African Studies and Center for Privacy Studies
Francis Ethelbert Kwabena Benyah joins Centre of African Studies (CAS) as an Assistant Professor in African Studies, with a dual role at the Centre for Privacy Studies in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Copenhagen.
Francis Ethelbert Kwabena Benyah, join Centre of African Studies (CAS) as an Assistant Professor in African Studies, with a dual role at the Centre for Privacy Studies in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Copenhagen. Benyah’s primary responsibilities at CAS involve teaching and conducting research on Religion and Culture in West Africa. He has a specific focus on exploring the various dimensions of the intersection between Religion and Culture in West Africa, as well as Privacy Studies. His particular interest lies in investigating how religion, culture, memory, and privacy interact at former slave castles and forts in Ghana.
Prior to joining CAS, Benyah conducted research on the manifestation of African Christianity within the Pentecostal movement in Ghana. He continues to explore the intersections of Pentecostal Christianity with different aspects of public life, including media, politics, health, and human rights. Benyah has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters on these topics. Benyah is currently working on two monographs: 1) Cosmologies of Mental Health: Pentecostal Prayer Camps and Indigenous Knowledge of Healing Mental Illness in Ghana (London: Bloomsbury) and 2) Pneumatic Paraphernalia, Sympathetic Magic, and Spiritual Warfare in Ghanaian Pentecostalism.
Apart from his work at CAS, Benyah is also a research fellow in the Psychology Cross-Training Programme at the University of Birmingham. He is currently working on a project called "Prophetism and Psychosocial Wellbeing among Neo-Pentecostal Christians in Ghana," which is funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Benyah is also an active participant in a multinational project called Religion and Social Exclusion (RelEx) at Åbo Akademi University in Turku, Finland.
Benyah was awarded the Lamin Sanneh Research Prize (2022-2024) by the Overseas Ministries Study Centre (OMSC) at Princeton Theological Seminary for his research on Pentecostal healing camps and mental health in Ghana. He currently serves as a course facilitator for OMSC’s online certificate course in Lived Theology and World Christianity.
In addition to his academic roles, Benyah serves as the short review editor for the African Religions section of the journal Religious Studies Review. He is also the board chairman of the Christian Service University’s International Foundation, a charity organization registered in the US as the philanthropic arm of the Christian Service University in Ghana.