Dzodzi Tsikata is Research Professor and Director of the Institute of African Studies (IAS) at the University of Ghana where she has worked since 1991. She holds Ph.D in Social Science from Leiden University in the Netherlands. Her research is in the areas of gender and development policies and practices; the politics and livelihood effects of land tenure reforms; agricultural commercialisation, agrarian change and food security; and informal labour relations and the conditions of work.

She has coordinated various research projects and has many publications on these subjects. Her most recent publications include a co-guest edited (with Cheryl Doss and Gale Summerfield) special issue of Feminist Economics on Land, Gender and Food Security (2014) and an edited book (with Ruth Hall and Ian Scoones), “Africa’s Land Rush: Implications for Rural Livelihoods and Agrarian Change”, published by James Currey (2015). Dzodzi teaches the advanced gender and women’s studies course in the Ph.D Development Studies Programme at the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) where she was based before her appointment as Director of IAS. She is on the editorial advisory board of Journal of Peasant Studies and the Canadian Journal of Development Studies, and is a member of the editorial collective of Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy. She is a member of the UN Committee for Development Policy (CDP). She is on the Board of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE), the Steering Committee of the Network for Women’s Rights in Ghana (NETRIGHT) and the Executive Committee of Third World Network Africa (TWN-Africa).  Dzodzi is a former President of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA).