Peace Adzo Medie

Peace Adzo Medie was born in Liberia and left as a child when civil war drove her family back to Ghana. War, gender and violence became the subjects of both her research and her fiction.

Education

Her family settled in Ho, and she attended OLA Girls Senior High School. She has said the move made her notice how class shaped the lives of the people around her. She graduated in geography and resource development from the University of Ghana in 2003, took an MA in international studies at Ohio University in 2006 and a PhD in public and international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh in 2012.

Academic career

Her article on how Liberia's women's movement pushed for enforcement of rape law won the African Affairs African Author Prize for 2012-13. She was a research fellow at the University of Ghana's Legon Centre for International Affairs and Diplomacy from 2013 to 2018, with fellowships at Oxford (2015-16) and Princeton (2016-17). In 2019 she joined the University of Bristol as a senior lecturer in gender and international politics, becoming associate professor in 2022. Her book Global Norms and Local Action (2020) studies campaigns against violence against women in Africa. She has also co-edited the journal African Affairs.