Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong is a professor of history and African and African American Studies, and the Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Harvard University Center for African Studies at Harvard University. He is a faculty associate for the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, a previous board member of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute, and has also previously held a prestigious Harvard College Professorship. As a former (2002–06) Chair of the Committee on African Studies (now the Center of African Studies, under the leadership of founding director, Caroline Elkins), Akyeampong was instrumental, along with Henry Louis Gates and multiple other faculty members at Harvard University, in shaping the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard. His research focuses on West African history, Islam in sub-Saharan Africa, disease and medicine, ecology, the African diaspora, political economy and trade.
Originally from Ghana, Akyeampong earned his B.A. from the University of Ghana in 1984, M.A. in European history from Wake Forest University in 1989, and Ph.D. in African history from the University of Virginia in 1993.