Prof. Mary Boatemaa Setrana is Associate Professor of Migration and Social Change and Director of the Centre for Migration Studies (CMS) at the University of Ghana. She also serves as the IDRC Research Chair on Forced Displacement in Anglophone West Africa, leading a multi-country project that strengthens knowledge and generates policy-relevant evidence on forced displacement across Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.
Her academic leadership spans Africa and beyond. She works closely with the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) Centre of Excellence on Migration and Mobility and has contributed to national migration policies in Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Ghana, including Ghana’s Diaspora Policy and National Academic Diaspora Intervention Roadmap. At the continental level, she serves on the African Union Commission advisory and technical groups on migration governance, trains AU member states, and currently leads the evaluation of the African Union Migration Policy Framework across member states and regional economic communities.
She also contributes to international research collaborations and policy publications with networks such as IMISCOE, the MIDEQ Programme, CERC Migration (Canada), and the Young Africans on the Move Network (Uganda). Through these platforms, she advances comparative research on migration governance, forced displacement, and gendered mobilities, ensuring African perspectives are central to global policy and scholarly outputs.
Prof. Setrana’s work bridges research, policy, and practice, anchoring academic inquiry in real-world challenges and amplifying the voices and experiences of the Global South, particularly West Africa, in shaping migration governance and knowledge production.
