Boxing is no Cakewalk! Azumah ‘Ring Professor’ Nelson in the Social History of Ghanaian Boxing

Professor Botchway is an Associate Professor of History (Africa and the African Diaspora) at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. His interest is in Black Religious and Cultural Nationalism(s), West Africa, Africans in Dispersion, African Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Sports (Boxing) in Ghana, Children in Popular Culture, World Civilisations, and Regionalism and Integration in Africa. 

He was a Fellow of the Centre of African Studies, University of Cambridge, England (2006-2007), a Visiting Scholar at the University of South Florida (2010), a Visiting Professor at Grand Valley State University, Michigan (2012), and received the AHP Fellowship award (2013/2014) from the American Council of Learned Societies. In addition, he gained postdoctoral experience at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. He is a member of the Historical Society of Ghana.

Professor Botchway has authored books and several scholarly articles. These include “Fela ‘The Black President’ as Grist to the Mill of the Black Power Movement in Africa” in Black Diaspora Review (2014), “Was it a Nine Days Wonder? A Note on the Proselytisation Efforts of the Nation of Islam in Ghana, c.1980s–2010” (co-authored) in New Perspectives on the Nation of Islam (Routledge, 2017), and Africa and the First World War: Remembrance, Memories and Representations after 100 Years a co-edited anthology (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018).