GPN Academics

• Dr. Mengistu Urge has worked for Haramaya University for over 30 years
• Research interests: Animal Science fields, mainly focusing on Animal Nutrition and Stress Physiology

• Full professor of Institutional and Resource Economics and an employee of Haramaya University, Ethiopia. He received BSc. in Agricultural Economics from Haramaya University, MSc. degree from Wageningen University, the Netherlands in 1997 in Management of Agricultural Knowledge Systems and PhD from Humboldt University of Berlin in Resource Economics, Germany in 2008.
  He has been teaching different courses and conducted research on different issues including sustainable land management, customary pastoral land administration, food security and land use systems, climate change and pastoral adaptations, governance of river basins with a focus on institutional arrangements, and natural resource-based conflict. 
• Research interests: property rights and collective action in natural resource management, institutions in environmental protection, project impact evaluation, and institutional and behavioral analysis. 

• Praveen Jha retired as Sukhamoy Chakravarty Chair Professor of Economics, from the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning (CESP), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, India . He also served as Adjunct Professor at the Centre for Informal Sector and Labour Studies (CISLS), School of Social Sciences, JNU, New Delhi, India.
• Research Focus: Political Economy of Development, with particular reference to Labour, Agriculture, Natural Resources, Public Finance, Education, and History of Economic Thought
• Research Cluster: Cluster 2 - Partnership in the global economy (agriculture and finance)

• Professor at the Centre for Informal Sector & Labour Studies, School of Social Sciences
• Research Focus: Contemporary history of adivasi livelihoods, labour and resistance, women and labour, environmental and labour history

• Professor, Department of Political Science and Public Administration
• Research Focus: The political economy of economic transformation in an era of the 4th Industrial Revolution
• Research Cluster: Cluster 2 – Partnerships in the Global Economy (Agriculture)

• Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Political and International Studies
• Research Focus:  development (particularly post-development theory), the politics of NGO work, service-learning and community engagement, higher education transformation and decolonisation, and race and privilege. These seemingly eclectic research interests are loosely held together by a general preoccupation with the question of whether and how the relatively privileged can contribute to struggles for social justice.
• Research Cluster: Partnership in Knowledge Production (Eurocentrism and Alternative Knowledge)

• Pan-African Institute for Development West Africa and Sahel Region (IPD/AOS)
• Research Focus: Social and economic appropriation of new technologies for development; Social and solidarity economy, job creation potential for young people and levers of organic agriculture, Cooperative or cooperative-type organizations, common interest groupings, decentralized financial systems, village tontine, mutual health insurance companies
• Research Cluster: Cluster 1 – Partnerships in Development Cooperation (access, empowerment, and deeper participation)

• Faculté d’Ethnologie
• Research Focus: Social sciences, Political philosophy, Humanitarian, NGOs, International aid and assistance
• Research Clusters: Cluster 1 – Partnerships in Development Cooperation (Accountability)

• Research Focus: Ethnology and history of political ideas

• Dean of School for Development Studies, Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Environment, Governance and Sustainable Development

• Associate Professor and the Dean of the School for Development Studies
• Research focus: informal economy organising, gender and rural women’s livelihoods, decent work along agricultural value chains

• Associate Professor at the Department of Labour and Human Resource Studies (University of Cape Coast), Associate fellow of the Global Labour University and a member of the Steering Committee of NETRIGHT, the women’s rights organization in Ghana.
• Research focus: She has researched and published in the area of gender and labour relations and is currently researching comparing the postcolonial development strategies of Ghana and Tanzania

Dr. Owusu Boampong is a Senior Research Fellow and the Head of the Department of Integrated Development Studies at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. He teaches Development theory at the postgraduate level. His work combines quantitative and qualitative approaches to generate policy-relevant insights, with a strong emphasis on inclusive development, labour resilience, and the socio-economic dynamics shaping sustainable urban development.  He conducts research and publishes in the areas of urban informality, circular economy and inclusive waste management systems. He is an Individual Member of the global research, policy and advocacy network; Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) and the Technical Committee member of the World Economic Forum-led Ghana National Plastic Action Partnership (GH-NPAP) since 2020. 

Some selected Publications:

• Hartmann, C., Hegel, C., & Boampong, O. (2022). The forgotten essential workers in the circular economy? Waste picker precarity and resilience amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Local Environment, 1–15. DOI: 10.1080/13549839.2022.2040464

• Boyetey, B. D., Boampong, O., & Enu-Kwesi, F. (2021). Effect of institutional mechanisms on micropension saving among informal economy workers in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. Heliyon, 7(9), 1–8. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405844021021071

• Adjei-Asomani, B., Boampong, O., & Potakey, H.M.D. (2026). Private Waste Collection in the Tema Metropolis, Ghana: A Spatial Analysis of User Satisfaction, African Studies, DOI: 10.1080/00020184.2026.2683192

• Miine, L.K., Akorsu, A.D., Boampong, O., & Bukari, S. (2024). Effects of digital agriculture on small-scale wage workers and employment. Cogent Social Sciences 10(1), 1–19

• Miine, L.K., Akorsu, A.D., Boampong, O., & Bukari, S. (2023). Drivers and intensity of adoption of digital agricultural services by smallholder farmers in Ghana. Heliyon 9(2023), 1–14.

• Boampong, O., Appiah-Boateng, S., Osei, N.Y., & Ametepe, R. (2023). Commercial surrogacy: Invisible reproductive workers in Ghana. Global Labour Journal, 14(2), 89–105

• Assistant Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tehran
• Research focus: Social Policy, Social Pension, Labor & Employment Policy, Social Right

• Associate Professor, Department of Social Planning, Faculty of Social Sciences
• Research focus: urban and regional planning, industrial development, social policy
• Research Cluster: Cluster 1 – Partnership in Development Cooperation

• Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Tehran

• Professor, University of Kara

• Senior research fellow at Sir Arthur Lewis Institute for Social and Economic Studies
• Research focus: Problems of racial power in development and freedom, and rurality and social changein modern world systems and Caribbean societies
• Current research interests: The Moral Economy of Markets and Debt; Food insecurity and the Political Economy of Food Systems; Globalization, Agrarian Change and Rural Futures; Climate Change, vulnerability and ‘rural resilience’ in small island states; Caribbean Poiesis and Africana Critical Theory; Economic Philosophy and Growth Theory; Decolonial Theory, Praxis and Poethics
• Research Clusters: Cluster 2 – Partnerships in the Global Economy (Agriculture, Finance, and Energy), Cluster 3 – Partnerships in Knowledge Production (Eurocentrism and Alternative Knowledge)

• Professor, Wits Department of Sociology - Globalization and Labour Relations in the Global South
• Research Focus: Labour, Ecological Marxism and Happiness/Wellbeing/Ecosocialism Studies
• Research Cluster: Cluster 3 – Partnership in Knowledge Production (Alternative Knowledge)

• Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of the Witwatersrand, editor of the Democratic Marxism Series, principal investigator for the Emancipatory Futures Studies in the Anthropocene project
• Research Focus: Civilisational Crisis, Empire, African political economy, South African International Relations, Transnational Systemic Alternatives and Emancipatory Futures

• Associate professor in the Department of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), South Africa
• Research Focus: political sociology, development, ecological issues, transformative politics and the solidarity economy, India, and South Africa

• Professor in Peace and Development Studies, University of South Africa (UNISA), South Africa
• Research focus: African-Chinese relations, African politics, Development Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Gender Studies, Feminist international relations, Peace and Conflict Studies, Security Studies
• Research Cluster: Cluster 1 – Partnership in Development Cooperation (Access, Accountability, and Inclusive Participation)

• Chair of Business Administration in the Food Economy and Agribusiness

• Professor of Politics and Development - Institute for International Development

• Scientific Staff of Fachgebiet OPATS (Or­ga­­nic Plant Pro­­­duc­­ti­on and Agro­e­co­­sys­­tems Re­­se­­arch in the Tro­pics and Sub­­­tro­pics)

• Lecturer at the Department of Political Science
• Banse’s research focuses on intersection of international and intersocietal relations, International Political Economy and development studies. In particular, she is interested in international trade and development policies, as well as international trade unions and labour rights. The regional focus of her work is (West-)Africa, with a specific focus on the EU/German – Africa relations.
• Research Cluster: Cluster 2 – Partnerships in the Global Economy (Agriculture, Finance, and Energy)

• Research Associate in the Just Transitions Division

• Head of the section Modern and Contemporary History, Faculty of Social Sciences
• Research Clusters: Cluster 1 – Partnership in Development Cooperation (Access, Accountability, and Active Participation); Cluster 3 – Partnership in Knowledge Production (Eurocentrism and Alternative Knowledge)

• Professor - International and Inter-Societal Relations, Faculty of Social Sciences

• Professor for "Global Political Economy of Labour under Consideration of Gender Relations" at the University of Kassel
• Executive Director of the International Center for Development and Decent Work (ICDD)

• Professor of Just Transitions

• Lecturer and Research Associate - International agricultural policy and environmental governance
• Research Focus: International political economy and governance of social-ecological transformations of agriculture and food systems, land grabbing, international and transnational cooperation in agriculture, bioenergy and other land-based climate change politics
• Research Clusters: Cluster 1 – Partnership in Development Cooperation (Access, Accountability, and Inclusive Participation); Cluster 2 – Partnership in the Global Economy (Agriculture, Finance, and Energy); Cluster 3 – Partnership in Knowledge Production (Alternative Knowledge)

• Faculty of Economics and Management, Insitute of Management and Business Studies (IBWL), Section Sustainability Management
• Research Focus: humane work, models of sustainable management at the Base of the Pyramid, sustainable Value Chains - Sustainable Supply Chain Management, diffusion of sustainability and sustainability in humanitarian aid operations
• Research Cluster: Cluster 2 – Partnerships in the Global Economy (Agriculture, Finance, and Energy)

• Professor - Faculty of Disability, Inclusion and Social Participation

• Faculty of Organic Agriculture - Section International Agricultural Policy and Environmental Governance

• Member of the Section Management in the International Food Industry at the University of Kassel; Alumna of the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation; PhD representative of the Graduate Center for Environmental Research and Education (GradZ) at the University of Kassel
• Research Focus: Governance of agricultural value chains, decent work and social justice, gender equality, business accountability, UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
• Research Cluster: Cluster 2 – Partnerships in the Global Economy (Agriculture and Finance)

• Professor of Human-Environment Interactions at the Kassel Institute for Sustainability

• Lecturer at the Faculty of Social Sciences , Section Global Political Economy
• Research Focus: Political Economy of Development, Foreign Aid Policies, Development Cooperation
• Research Cluster: Cluster 2 – Partnerships in the Global Economy

• Faculty of Organic Agriclutural Sciences - International Agricultural Policy and Environmental Governance
• Research Clusters: Cluster 1 – Partnerships in Development Cooperation (Access); Cluster 2 – Partnerships in the Global Economy (Agriculture)

• Head of Section Sociology for Diversity, Faculty of Social Sciences

• Executive Director of the GPN, Head of the section Development and Postcolonial Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences