Prof. George M. Bob-Milliar, Associate Professor at the Department of History and Political Studies and also Director of the Centre for Cultural and African Studies, (CeCASt) College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CoHSS), has been awarded a grant by the Danish Independent Research Fund. The Research Grant was awarded to fund a research project entitled Environmental Crime and Illegal Ecologies (ILLECO), led by the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Prof. George M. Bob-Milliar, co-principal investigator and key member of the project’s core team, will work with Prof. Henrik Vigh, project leader, from the Centre for Global Criminology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, from the years 2023–2025. The ILLECO is an ethnographic study of environmental crime that investigates the illegal extraction of metals for use in technological products and illuminates the relationship of irregular mining to the green transition. The project will follow the movement of minerals from Ghana to technological products and the subsequent technological waste that is dumped in the same area.

The ILLECO project will train two Ghanaian postgraduate students at the Department of History and Political Studies, CoHSS, KNUST. The grant will cover their tuition fees, accommodation, stipend, and research support for three years. The two students will be mentored by senior researchers on the project and they will be eligible to participate in related project activities, including research seminars to sharpen their data collection skills, analysis, and application of conceptual/theoretical frameworks.

The College wish to congratulate Prof. George M. Bob-Milliar on winning the grant