About

With a background in African Diaspora history, Dr. Ashie-Nikoi is interested in how culture and history are traditionally remembered, documented, and represented in African/diasporan cultural systems. Her academic research engages the myriad cultural records peoples of African descent produce as well as the institutions and processes involved in preserving these, interrogates how indigenously produced information is (to be) preserved for future generations, and examines the impact this has on knowledge production from and about Africa and its diaspora. Broad areas of interest include Black archival traditions and memory work, decolonizing archival knowledge and practice, and “alternate archives” in Africa and its diaspora. Current projects consider archival silence, archival activism, and community archives in the African context, and undertake pan-African interrogations of the archive. She has published in African Studies, information and interdisciplinary journals.

Education

PhD, History, New York University

MA, Information Studies, University of Ghana

BA, History, Spelman College

Research Interest

Africa/diaspora history & the archive; alternative & indigenous archives; archival silence & loss; embodied & ritual archives; archival activism; community archives; critical archival theory; archives & African knowledge production; indigenous knowledge; Black archival traditions

Publications

Opoku-Boateng, J. & Ashie-Nikoi, E. (forthcoming 2025). Strengthening African audiovisual archives: Embracing intercontinental linkages. Public Journal, 35(71)

Ashie-Nikoi, E. (2024). Close encounters of the archival kind: Affect and transnational solidarities in African diaspora archives. The International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion (IJIDI), 8(3/4), 54-67. https://doi.org/10.33137/ijidi.v8i3/4.43650

Ashie-Nikoi, E. (2024). Out of the ashes: Rethinking loss in the African archive. Social Dynamics. 50(1), 26-42. https://doi.org/10/1080/02533953.2024.2327248

Ashie-Nikoi, E., Adjei, E., & Adams, M. (2023). Of bonfires, mindsets and policies: the multi-causal matrix of silence in Ghanaian public archives. In A. Prescott & A. Wiggins (Eds.), Archives: Power, Truth and Fiction, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ashie-Nikoi, E. Total Recall (Tapestries of history: a participatory storytelling project in Wa, Upper West Region, Ghana). Museums Journal, Sept/Oct 2021, 36-37 (invited submission).

Ashie-Nikoi, E. (2021). More than songs and stories: the nexus between cultural records and national development. Information Development, 37(1): 32-44.

Ashie-Nikoi, E. (2019). “Ghana’s cultural records in diaspora: perspectives from papers held at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.” African Journal of Library, Archives and Information Science, 29(2): 143-155

Ashie-Nikoi, E. (2005). A multi-functional space: the uses of rituals among enslaved and freed Afro-Caribbean peoples. The Journal of Caribbean History, 39(1&2): 88-101.

Ashie-Nikoi, E. (1998). Cohobblepot: African survivals in Barbadian culture through the lens of Crop Over. The Journal Of Caribbean History, 32(1& 2): 82-120.