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Congratulations to Mette Brogden on Distinguished Faculty Outreach Award

Tuesday
Professor Mette Brogden, Rashid Iddrisu, and Sadie Kent at a presidential ceremony in Sawla. The group had the opportunity to meet President of Ghana, His Excellency John Mahama, and hear him share his two-year plan for road restoration in the Savannah Region.

Prof. Mette Brogden has received the 2026 Distinguished Faculty Outreach Award from the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences (SBS) at the University of Arizona. An anthropologist, Dr. Brogden (pictured at left above during a recent field visit to Ghana) is an Assistant Professor of Practice in the Human Rights Practice Program in the School of Global Studies. Congratulations to Mette on this important recognition!

The SBS Distinguished Faculty Outreach Faculty Award recognizes sustained faculty outreach, including "a significant record of providing outreach in communities in the state, region, country, or outside of the U.S." It also recognizes a "significant amount of work in community, public, private, or nonprofit sectors, domestically or internationally, that offers partnerships, support, or innovation through working toward improving conditions in communities or societies."

Since 2019, Dr. Brogden has worked in rural northern Ghana’s Savannah Region, which has has experienced converging issues of extremist recruitment efforts, death of the supreme paramount chief of the Gonja tribe, deforestation, and sudden outbreaks of violence. One of her many projects involves supporting the establishment of a cultural preservation NGO, native tree nurseries, and a research-practice partnership to integrate indigenous education into K12 schools. Another project focuses on rebuilding the Gonja Traditional Palace at Nyane, which had originally been built in the 1500s but had been sitting in ruins since the 1930s. 

Dr. Brogden has also been doing outreach in Estonia since 2022, right after the start of the Soviet invasion of Ukraine. Estonia shares a border with Russia and many Russians are still living in the country.  She has participated in conferences and workshops concerning security, democracy, and the Ukrainian war as creating new threats in the region.  She has been an invited keynote speaker, a panel organizer, and a paper presenter four times and is building the groundwork for a larger project and conference convening that can involve more people internationally in peace building and securitization.