Dr. Augustina Naami is a Senior Lecturer and the Head of the Department of Social Work at the University of Ghana. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics with a minor in French from the University of Ghana. She obtained her master’s and doctoral degrees in Social Work from the Universities of Chicago and Utah, respectively both in the United States of America.

Dr Augustina Naami has a distinguished track record of scholarship in teaching, research, and extension service. Dr. Naami teaches a range of areas in social work, mostly with macro-level practice and policy orientations at both undergraduate and graduate levels at Accra Main and City campuses. Her research focuses on disability, mental health, the intersection of vulnerabilities, gender, social policy, and poverty.

Dr. Naami has also been active in grantsmanship. She was awarded a seed grant and postdoctoral fellowship from BANGA-Africa, supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York in 2017. While pursuing her postdoctoral fellowship in the United States, she was awarded a grant from the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities for a project to understand disability-specific deprivation of liberty in Ghana. Dr Naami’s research ability was rewarded when she received the 2015 College of Social and Behavioral Sciences Tenure-Track Faculty Award for Scholarship and Creative Activity at the University of Northern Iowa, where she previously worked as an Assistant Professor for four and a half years.

Dr. Naami has published extensively, in high impact peer-reviewed journals and book chapters. She has also published an evidence-based manual that bridges the gap between research and practice and lays out step-by-step actions of how access barriers for persons with disabilities could be addressed. Dr. Naami’s scholarly work was rewarded at the Society for Disability Studies Annual Conference held at the Regency Hotel, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 2014. Her paper, Disability, gender, and employment relationships in Africa: The case of Ghana, won The Tanis Doe Prize for the best poster.

Dr. Naami is actively engaged in service on both statutory and ad-hoc committees at the Department of Social Work and the university at large. She also serves on several boards of Civil Society and Faith-Based Organisations. She was a member of the Technical Committee that reviewed the Persons with Disability Act, 715 to align to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. As a member of this committee, Dr. contributed immensely to ensure that the rights of persons with various types of disabilities are preserved.