Gretchen Bauer

Biography

Gretchen Bauer, PhD (University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1994) joined the Department in 1994. She teaches classes in African politics, African politics and literature, and gender and politics. She conducts research on women's political leadership in Africa, with a current focus on women in parliament and cabinet in Ghana and West Africa. Professor Bauer has been a visiting researcher at the Institute for Public Policy Research in Windhoek, Namibia (2002) and at the University of Botswana in Gaborone (2009). During 2016 she was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Ghana in Accra. During 2019 she was a senior fellow focused on parliaments and democracy in Africa at the Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA) at the University of Ghana, and in 2023 she returned to MIASA as co-convenor and senior fellow focused on increasing women’s political presence in West Africa. At the University of Delaware, she directed the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) Mandela Washington Fellowship from 2014 to 2018.

Professor Bauer currently serves as P​resident of the African Studies Association (USA).​