Serena Owusua Dankwa is a Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Social Anthropology. She has worked at the crossroads of academic, activist, and artistic forms of knowledge production, with a particular focus on queer, feminist, and African (precolonial) concepts of gender, friendship and intimacy. She is currently preparing a documentation of the journal Feminist Africa and a larger exploration of transnational gender development and solidarity projects.

Her monograph Knowing Women: Same-Sex Intimacy, Gender and Identity in Postcolonial Ghana (Cambridge 2021) is the first full-length ethnography on African women’s same-sex intimacies outside South Africa and received the Ruth Benedict Prize.The book is based on doctoral research conducted in affiliation with the University of Ghana, Legon and was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Sarah Pettit Fellowship at Yale University.

Dankwa‘s focus on knowledge production is also informed, on the one hand, by curriculum analyses and action-research conducted at three schools of higher art education in Zurich and Geneva in the framework of Art.School.Differences. On the other hand, the higher education development project Critical Diversity Literacy through Arts and Further Education at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland allowed her to design research- and arts-based teaching formats that promote critical diversity. The findings of this project (that was conducted in collaboration with WITS University in Johannesburg) are documented in a three-part podcast and the co-edited open access volume Bildung.Macht.Diversität (transcript 2021).

Dankwa is returning to academia after an extended period of working in the field of gendered migration and development cooperation. With Switzerland’s leading anti-trafficking NGO FIZ, she sensitized and advocated for the rights of sex workers and labour migrants. With IAMANEH Switzerland she has been supporting and training community-based sexual health organizations in francophone West Africa and Southeast Europe in their work against gender-based violence and towards reproductive justice. She has also been responsible for IAMANEHs film festival and is still co-leading the NGO’s Gender, Equity, and Transformation unit. She also serves as juror for the equality prize of the City of Zurich and on the expert commission of the Swiss cultural foundation pro helvetia.

Dankwa holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Bern, an MMus from the Music Academy of Lucerne and an MA in African Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). For her MA she worked with ethnomusicological and historical data from the Basel Mission. Prior to her scholarly and non-governmental activities, she taught classical guitar and worked as cultural journalist for Swiss Radio and Television SRF and for BBC Radio 3 in London.

• Sexuality, Intimacy, Kinship

• Belonging, Intersectionality, Critical Diversity

• Development Cooperation and Reproductive Justice

• Gender-based Violence, Work Migration and Human Trafficking

• Black, Postcolonial, and Decolonial Feminisms

• West Africa

• Switzerland

• Southeast Europe

Monograph:

Dankwa, Serena O. (2021). Knowing Women: Same-Sex intimacy, Gender and Identity in Postcolonial Ghana. African Identities Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Edited Books:

Dankwa, Serena O., Filep, Sarah-Mee, Ulla Klingovsky and Georges Pfruender (2021). Bildung.Macht.Diversität: Critical Diversity Literacy im Hochschulraum. Bielefeld: transcript.

Wa Baile, Mohamed, Serena O. Dankwa, Tarek Naguib, Patricia Purtschert, and Sarah Schilliger, eds. (2019). Racial Profiling: Struktureller Rassismus und antirassistischer Widerstand. Bielefeld: transcript.

Peer-Reviewed Articles:

Dankwa, Serena O. (2023) Desiring Queer Motherhood and Mothering Ourselves. Journal of African Cultural Studies 

Dankwa, Serena O. (2022). “Politics and Poetics: Responding from Both Ends”. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Vol. 42 (3), p. 685-688

Dankwa, Serena O. (2021). “Book Reviews: Response by the Author”. Africa Vol. 91 (4), p. 690-693.

Dankwa, Serena (2016). “Das Potential einer Analyse von Curricula: Das Fallbeispiel Musik“. In: Saner, Philippe, Sophie Vögele und Pauline Vessely: Schlussbericht Art.School.Differences: Researching Inequalities and Normativities in the Field of Higher Art Education. Zürich: Institute of Art Education, p. 303-329.

Dankwa, Serena O. (2011). “’The one who first says I love you’: Female Same-Sex Relations and Relational Masculinity in Postcolonial Ghana”. Ghana Studies 14, p. 223- 64.

Dankwa, Serena (2009). “’It’s a Silent Trade’: Female Same-Sex Intimacies in Postcolonial Ghana.” Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, Vol. 17(3), p. 192-205.

Dankwa, Serena (2005). “’Shameless Maidens’: Women’s Agency and the Mission in Akuapem“. Agenda Sexuality and Body Image, 63, p. 105- 16. 

Book Chapters:

Steyn, Melissa with Serena O. Dankwa (2021). “Revisiting Critical Diversity Literacy: Grundlagen

für das einundzwanzigste Jahrhundert“. In: Dankwa, Serena O., Sarah-Mee Filep, Ulla Klingovsky and Georges Pfründer, Bildung.Macht.Diversität: Critical Diversity Literacy im Hochschulraum. Bielefeld: transcript, p. 35-54.

Klingovsky, Ulla, Serena O. Dankwa, Sarah-Mee Filep, and Georges Pfründer (2021). “Bildung.Macht.Diversität – ein verschlungenes Feld“. In: Dankwa, Serena O., Sarah-Mee Filep, Ulla Klingovsky and Georges Pfründer. Bildung.Macht.Diversität: Critical Diversity Literacy im Hochschulraum. Bielefeld: transcript, p. 17-36

Dankwa, Serena and Shelley Berlowitz (2020). “Sexarbeit. Macht. Rassismus”. In: Appell

Sexarbeit ist Arbeit (eds). Ich bin Sexarbeiterin: Porträts und Texte. Zürich: Limmat Verlag, p. 121-129.

Dankwa, Serena O. (2020). “The Imagined Homoconference: 'Activistism' and the Politics of Indirection.” In: Rachel Spronk and Thomas Hendriks (eds). Readings in Sexualities from Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, p.171-185.

Dankwa, Serena O., Christa Ammann, and Jovita dos Santos Pinto (2019). “Profiling und Rassimus im Kontext Sexarbeit: ‘overpoliced and underprotected’”. In: Wa Baile, Mohamed, Serena O. Dankwa, Tarek Naguib, Patricia Purtschert, and Sarah Schilliger (eds): Racial Profiling: Struktureller Rassismus und antirassistischer Widerstand. Bielefeld: transcript, p. 155-172.

Wa Baile, Mohamed, Serena O. Dankwa, Tarek Naguib, Patricia Purtschert, and Sarah Schilliger (2019). “Racial Profiling und antirassistischer Widerstand”. In: Wa Baile, Mohamed et al.: Racial Profiling: Struktureller Rassismus und antirassistischer Widerstand. Bielefeld: transcript, p. 9-38.

Baumann, Sabian, Serena O. Dankwa, and Heinz-Jürgen Voss (2017). “A Fiction Called Gender – Über Geschlecht und Kapitalismus. ” In: Dal Molin, Gioia and Anna Francke (Le Foyer): [f: la rèpete]. Zürich: edition fink, p. 13-22.

Dankwa, Serena (2013). “’The one who first says I love you’: Gendered Female Relationalities In Postcolonial Ghana.” In: Nyeck, S. N. and Marc Epprecht. Sexual Diversity in Africa: Politics, Theory, Citizenship. Montréal: McGill Queen’s Press, p. 170-87.

Dankwa, Serena (2009). “Juggling Femininities: Mzbel and Ghana’s Gendered Popular Music”. In: Ineichen, Martina, Anna K. Liesch, Anja Rathmann-Lutz und Simon Wenger. Gender in Trans-it: Transkulturelle und transnationale Perspektiven. Zürich: Chronos Verlag, p. 147-57.

Dankwa, Serena (2009). “Female Masculinity Revisited: Situatives Mannsein im Kontext südghanaischer Frauenbeziehungen”. In: Binswanger, Christa, Margaret Bridges, Brigitte Schnegg und Doris Wastl-Walter. Gender Scripts: Widerspenstige Aneignungen von Geschlechternormen. Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, p. 161-82.

Policy and NGO-Papers:

Dankwa, Serena O. (2022). Power critical: IAMANEH Switzerland developing postcolonial perspectives. Medicus Mundi Schweiz Bulletin 164. December 2022.

Dankwa, Serena, Diliana Markova, Nadya Kozhouharova and Susanne Seytter (2018). Swiss Bulgarian Bilateral Guidelines for the Identification, Protection and Referral of Trafficked Persons. Authored by Animus Association and FIZ Advocacy and Support for Migrant Women and Victims of Trafficking within the Swiss-Bulgarian Cooperation Program, Thematic Fund Security, p. 1-112.

Journalist Pieces (selected):

Dankwa, Serena O. (2022). Anstoss: Zwiebeln kaufen. In: Neue Wege, 2022 (3), p. 3-4.

Dankwa, Serena Owusua (2020). Anstoss: Die Grausamkeit des Schönen. In: Neue Wege, 2020 (7), p. 3-4.

Dankwa, Serena and Nina Seiler (2018). “Körper als Kapital: Sex als Arbeit”. In: HAZ-Magazin, Sept. – Nov. 2018 (3), p. 10-11.

Dankwa, Serena (2015). “Doing everything together – Queere Familienformen im ghanaischen Kontext”. SYM – evangelische Akademie Bad Boll, March 2015 (1), p. 14-15.

Dankwa, Serena (2013). “Keine Namen. Kein Geschlecht”. In: Berlowitz, Shelley, Elisabeth Joris and Zeedah Meierhofer-Mangeli: Terra Incognita? Der Treffpunkt Schwarzer Frauen in Zürich. Zürich: Limmat Verlag, p. 264- 5.

Radio-Features and Audio-Publications (selected):

Public Statements (Selection):