Richard Oware (he/him) is currently a PhD Candidate in the Department of History. His dissertation, “Witchcraft, Mental Illness and Culture: Older Women at the Crossroads of Modernity and Change in Ghana, 1900-1980s,” contributes to gender and medical history by examining the historical antecedents that have shaped the humiliations and accusations of older women as witches in Ghana. Engaging a wide range of sources like colonial legislation and missionary and anthropological correspondences on witchcraft, Richard examines how evolving ideas underlying the phenomena have shaped the Ghanaian understanding, treatment and identification of mental illness that affect older women. He is particularly interested in how witchcraft became a contested system of knowledge within the Ghanaian colonial space and its connotational impact on meanings for contemporary discussions and policy directions on Aging and Population Health in Ghana. Moreover, Richard corroborates these sources with oral histories from Older Women to push against witchcraft narratives that marginalize the essential roles older women play as traditional healers, grandmothers and agents of socialization in Ghana.
His other research interests include Traditional Medicine and Healing in Africa, Colonial Psychiatry and Mental Illness in Africa, Aging, Witchcraft, and Population Health, with a focus on older women in Ghana.
Previous Work completed in the Department of History: MA Thesis-“The Disease of the Civilized: Magaret Joyce Field and African Insanity in Ghana, 1900-1960.” (Nominated for Best Thesis Award in the Department of History).