Nana Kesse

Nana Kesse is a historian of Africa and a Higgins/New Earth Conversation Faculty Fellow in Environmental Humanities at Clark University. He specializes in the histories of water and the environment, slavery and the slave trade, as well as the social and cultural history of West Africa. His research covers the last three hundred years, focusing on the intricate relationships between bodies of water and human societies in West Africa and how these connections have shaped the history of the region. Kesse’s current book project, Living with Water: Aquaculture, Environment, and Slavery in a West African Stilt House Community, examines the social and environmental history of Nzulezo, the only stilt-house community on water in Ghana and one of the few in Africa with a history dating back to the mid-eighteenth century. For over two centuries, the Nzulezo people have lived on the Amanzule River, sharing the water space with animals such as crocodiles, pythons, and fish, while enduring unfavorable phenomena like seasonal flooding and the Atlantic slave trade. Why did the Nzulezo choose to settle on water instead of land, and how does their story illustrate what it means to live on and with water over time? Kesse addresses these critical questions, showing how prolonged human interactions with bodies of water often resulted in complex relationships between culture and ecology, as well as humans and waterbodies. Nzulezo’s story also deepens our understanding of the social and cultural meanings of water and human-animal relationships in precolonial West Africa.

In addition to this research, Kesse actively speaks and writes about the Atlantic slave trade and the sociopolitical history of West Africa, with a particular focus on Ghana. His first book, Ethnic Factor in Ghanaian Politics: A Case Study of the Asawase Constituency, published in 2013, explores the relationship between ethnicity and politics and how both impacted Ghana’s political geography. His other scholarly works on the transatlantic slave trade and the African environment have appeared in peer-reviewed journals and other popular venues, including the International Journal of African Historical Studies and the global history podcast "Fascinating People, Fascinating Places." Moreover, Kesse’s study of the Nzulezo people’s intricate relationship with the Amanzule River is currently under review in The Journal of African History. These projects have generously been funded by competitive grants and fellowships, including the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, the Fulbright-Hays Fellowship, and the Otumfuo Fellowship, which is awarded by the King of the Asante Kingdom.