Emmanuel is a PhD candidate at SOAS, where his work investigates the politics of new cities in Ghana, Nigeria and Rwanda. The study adopts a comparative approach to explicate the roles and experiences of local and international actors in the design and implementation of these mega-projects and the implications of these dynamics for state politics. Although grounded in the temporal, spatial and cultural specificities of the cases selected, the study uses city-making as a unique prism to speak to broader discourses around sovereignty, citizenship, and political utopianism.

 

Before his doctoral studies, Emmanuel completed his bachelor's and master's degrees in architecture at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. Following this, he worked in mainstream and activist architecture practices for over a decade. He also taught at the School of Architecture and Design at Central University – a private tertiary institution in Ghana.

 

Some of his work to date has investigated the political rhetoric and ritual over Ghana's national cathedral, as well as the role of urban mega-projects – such as the post-independence new city of Tema – in the image-building politics of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president.