About Me

Dela Kuma obtained a Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at Northwestern University. Dr. Kuma specializes in African archaeology, the archaeology of ‘legitimate’ trade, and the archaeology of the Atlantic world. Her current research, titled “Nkudzedze: Africanizing Tastes and Consumer Power during ‘Legitimate’ Trade at Amedeka, Ghana (AD 1807-1900), examines broad transformations in local tastes and everyday life during the nineteenth-century global trade.

 

She specializes in using archaeometry and archaeobotanical tools to answer archaeological questions concerning foodways, trade, and global exchange networks. Dela has also worked on archaeological projects in Nigeria, Portugal, Italy, Israel, and Russia. She was the 2018 co-coordinator of the Northwestern University African Graduate Student Seminar. Generous fellowships from Northwestern University, the Social Science Research Council’s Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship, and the University of Missouri Research Reactor Center Pre-Doctoral Award have supported her research.

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Before pursuing a Ph.D. at Northwestern University, Dela graduated from Sapienza Universita di Roma, Italy, Universidad di Evora, Portugal, with an MSc. in Archaeological Materials Science and a B.A. in Archaeology and Heritage Studies with honors from the University of Ghana.