Prof. Eric Opoku Mensah is a Rhetoric and Media Studies scholar and was the Acting Vice – Chancellor of the University of Media, Arts and Communication.
Prof. Opoku Mensah holds Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) Degree and Master of Philosophy Degree in English Language from the University of Cape Coast. He completed a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Degree in Rhetoric Studies at the Centre for Film and Media Studies, University of Cape Town, South Africa, where he focused his doctoral research on the political communication of Dr Kwame Nkrumah. Prof. Opoku Mensah has a deep-seated interest in Dr. Nkrumah’s pan-African rhetorical enterprise, his rhetorical artefacts, their formations, and how they contributed to the creation of nationhood, citizenship in Ghana and Africa.
Prof. Opoku Mensah has participated in numerous international and local conferences and workshops in political rhetoric, communication studies and higher education workshops in Ghana, Africa, Europe, Asia and North America. He also serves as a reviewer for several local and international journals in rhetoric and communication studies. Again, he serves as an External Assessor for the National Accreditation Board (NAB), now Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) and as an External Examiner for some public and private universities in Ghana. He is a frequent visiting scholar at Uppsala University, Sweden. He has numerous peer-reviewed articles in both local and international journals.
Apart from his academic work, Prof. Opoku Mensah has considerable experience in Ghana’s higher education landscape in terms of policy framework and university union leadership. He has participated in numerous workshops and forums on higher education policy developments both locally and internationally. He is also a past National President of the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG). He also served as Local President and Local Vice President of the University of Cape Coast chapter of UTAG.
He has served in various administrative positions and boards both at the University of Cape Coast (UCC), erstwhile Ghana Institute of journalism (GIJ) and the University of Media Arts and Communication (UniMAC). At the Prof. Opoku Mensah served as member of the University of Cape Coast Governing Council, Academic Board, College Board, and two Faculty Boards (Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Biological Sciences), as well as the Head of Department of Communication Studies for two terms (2016-2020) and several other roles. He has a clear understanding of Ghana’s higher education policy framework and has participated in several workshops on the Ghana’s Tertiary Education Policy and the University Bill.
Prof. Opoku Mensah has won several grants from the Swedish Council for Higher Education, Education International, Swedish National Bank, The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT) and Uppsala Forum for Democracy, Peace and Justice, among others. At the National level, Prof. Opoku Mensah has served on the technical Committee of the Ministry of Information initiative on the Media Capacity Enhancement Programme since 2019. This national initiative has led to the training of over 100 journalists from all over Ghana.
Prof. Opoku Mensah is married with children. He enjoys political debates and has an abiding love for Afro Beats.