Abena Dove Osseo-Asare

Abena Dove Osseo-Asare is a historian of medicine and science who focuses on cases in African countries. She received her AB and PhD from the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University, where she concentrated on the history of medicine with her primary adviser, Allan Brandt. She grew up in Ghana and the United States and became interested in the history behind the health disparities she observed within her own family. She studies the ways that communities share medical and scientific knowledge over time and how differential access to knowledge shapes global health.

Bitter Roots: The Search for Healing Plants in Africa (Chicago, 2014), her first book, examines efforts of drug companies, African scientists, healers, and rural communities to transform six plants into pharmaceuticals. Her current project is a book and documentary film about Ghana's medical isotopes and nuclear energy program, "Atomic Junction: Nuclear Power in Africa after Independence".

This PECE essay helps to answer the STS Across Borders analytic question: “What people, projects, and products exemplify how this STS formation has developed over time?”

This essay highlights prominant and upcoming individuals working on critical science and technology issues in Africa and is part of a broader exhibit on "STS in Africa."