Jennifer Hart is a historian of Africa, specializing in the history of technology, infrastructure, mobility, and urban space in 20th century Ghana. She is the author of Making an African City: Technopolitics and the Infrastructure of Everyday Life in Colonial Accra (Indiana University Press, 2024). Her first book, Ghana on the Go: African Mobility in the Age of Motor Transportation (Indiana University Press, 2016), was a finalist for the Best Book Prize from the African Studies Association. A committed public and digital scholar, she is the director of the digital humanities project Accra Wala. Her writing can be found in The Washington Post, The Detroit News, The Conversation, and Africa is a Country.
A passionate teacher and administrator, Hart’s work is dedicated to the idea that no one should have to be lucky to benefit from the transformative power of higher education. She currently serves as a professor and chair of the Department of History at Virginia Tech and affiliate faculty in the departments of Science, Technology and Society and Urban Affairs and Planning. She is a senior scholar in the Office of Curricular and Pedagogical Innovation at the American Association of Colleges and Universities, the North American President for the International Society for the Scholarship on Teaching and Learning in History, and a member of the executive board of the African Studies Association. She conducts workshops and consults on general education reform and curriculum, assessment, faculty development, student success, interdisciplinary programs, community engagement, and international education.
Jennifer Anne Hart 