Nana Osei-Opare received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2019. Prior to joining Rice University, he taught at Fordham University (2019-2023) and was an Andrew Mellon Fellow for Assistant Professors at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton (2022-2023). During the 2023-2024 academic year, Osei-Opare will be a National Endowment for the Humanities/Ford Foundation Fellow at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City.

Osei-Opare is a historian of African and Cold War histories. His first book project, Socialist De-Colony: Black and Soviet Entanglements in Ghana’s Decolonization and Cold War Projects (contracted with Cambridge’s Global and International History Series), tells a new history of Ghana’s Cold War, political-economic, and decolonization projects during the Kwame Nkrumah era by situating Ghana within larger Marxist, racial, and socialist debates and geographies. Osei-Opare’s research has been supported by the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Award, Fordham’s Faculty Research Grant, the University of California President’s office, Silas Palmer Fellowship (Stanford University Hoover Institution Library), Foreign Language and Services Studies Fellowship, and UCLA’s International Studies Institute.

Alongside his first book project, Osei-Opare is coediting two edited volumes: (1) Socialism, Internationalism, and Development in the Third World: Envisioning Modernity in the Era of Decolonization (Bloomsbury Publishers) with Su Lin Lewis and (2) the Cambridge History of African Political Thought (Cambridge University Press) with Jonathon L. Earle, Emma Hunter, Harry N. K. Odamtten, and Ayesha Omar.

Osei-Opare has published articles on Ghana-Soviet relations; labor agitation in postcolonial Africa; Black radicals’ intellectual genealogical ties to Marxist-Leninism; African agency; the value of postcolonial African archives; historical methodology; and situating white supremacy and racism into the paradigm of diplomatic relations in Comparative Studies in Society and History, the Journal of African History, the Journal of West African History, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy Magazine, Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, and History: The Journal of the Historical Association.

Osei-Opare is dedicated to teaching and mentoring students. He received teaching awards at UCLA and Fordham. He is excited to oversee undergraduate theses, one-on-one tutorials, and independent research projects with students interested in African, international, or Cold War history broadly construed. Osei-Opare also very much welcomes inquiries from graduate students interested in African or International histories.

Book Manuscripts-in-Progress:

• Socialist De-Colony: Black and Soviet Entanglements in Ghana’s Decolonization and Cold War Projects (contracted to Cambridge University Press).
• Socialism, Internationalism, and Development in the Third World: Envisioning Modernity in the Era of Decolonization (Bloomsbury Publishers, forthcoming 2024), coediting with Su Lin Lewis 
• Cambridge History of African Political Thought (Cambridge University Press), coediting with Jonathan L. Earle, Emma Hunter, Harry N.K. Odamtten, and Ayesha Omar.

Selected Peer-Review Article Publications:

• “Ghana and Nkrumah Revisited: Lenin, State Capitalism, and Black Marxist Orbits,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 65:2 (April 2023), pp. 399-421.
• “‘If You Trouble a Hungry Snake, You Will Force It to Bite You’: Rethinking Postcolonial African Archival Pessimism, Worker Discontent, and Petition Writing in Ghana, 1957-66,” Journal of African History 62:1 (May 2021), pp. 59-78.
• “Uneasy Comrades: Postcolonial Statecraft, Race, and Citizenship, Ghana-Soviet Relations, 1957-1966,” Journal of West African History, 5(2) (Fall 2019), pp. 85-112.

Review Essays and Book Reviews:

• Review Essay, “Russia/USSR in the World,” in The Russian Review (December 2023) Choi Chatterjee, Russia in World History: A Transnational Approach (Bloomsbury, 2022); Alessandro Iandolo, Arrested Development: The Soviet Union in Ghana, Guinea, and Mali, 1955-1968 (Cornell, 2022); and Natalia Telepneva, Cold War Liberation: The Soviet Union and the Collapse of the Portuguese Empire in Africa, 1961-1975 (UNC Press, 2022).
• Marcello Musto, Another Marx: Early Manuscripts (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), History: Review of New Books, Vol. 49, No. 5, (September 2021).
• “The Quest for Scientific Equity in Postcolonial Ghana,” Abena Dove Osseo-Asare, Atomic Junction: Nuclear Power in Africa after Independence (Cambridge, 2019), Journal of African History, Vol. 62, Issue 1 (August 2021).
• Steven Friedman, Race, Class, and Power: Harold Wolpe and the Radical Critique of Apartheid, African Studies Quarterly, Volume 16, Issue 3-4. January 2017, pp. 193-195.
• Barry Gilder, Songs & Secrets: South Africa from Liberation to Governance, Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, Volume 38, Issue 1, December 2014, pp 289-291.
• Carmela Garritano, African Video Movies and Global Desires: A Ghanaian History, African Studies Quarterly, Volume 14, Issue 3, March 2014, pp. 128-129.       

Selected Public-Facing Publications:

• “Anti-Black racism is upending easy narratives about the exodus from Ukraine,” The Washington Post, March 3, 2022, with Thom Loyd.
• “When It Comes to America’s Race Issues, Russia Is a Bogeyman,” Foreign Policy Magazine, July 6, 2020.
• “Around the world, America has long been a symbol of antiblack racism,” The Washington Post, June 5, 2020.
• “Books that I Teach,” Black Agenda Report Book Forum, December 11, 2019.