A Note from the Editors: Ghana Studies @20

This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the founding of Ghana Studies, the official journal of the Ghana Studies Association. The year 2018 also marks the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the Ghana Studies Association, which was known at its inception in 1988 as the Akan Studies Council. These two important anniversaries merit reflection on the state of Ghana Studies as a field of study, as an organization, and as a publication. This issue delivers just that and more with an anniversary forum preceded by three stand-alone articles. Isidore Lobnibe's lively interview with Jack Goody turns the ethnographic gaze back onto the renowned Cambridge anthropologist to reflect on his early work in Northern Ghana. In their coauthored article, Raibu Asante and Dan-Bright Dzorgbo probe the ways that trust underpins the role mobile phones play in facilitating market relations among produce traders in Ghana. Rebecca Shumway's article turns to slavery, racism, and political organizing to knit together a picture of the shared legacies bequeathed by the transatlantic slave trade to the Gold Coast and the United States during the mid-nineteenth century. From anthropology and sociology to history, these three articles demonstrate the vitality of Ghana Studies as an interdisciplinary publication.

Jean Allman and Ato Quayson, preeminent scholars who have both given incredible visibility to Ghana Studies scholarship as a result of their own intellectual and institutional leadership, open our special anniversary forum with their own broad reflections on the politics of knowledge production that have shaped the associational and scholarly trajectories of Ghana Studies.

In a lively conversation between Akosua Adomako Ampofo and Stephan Miescher, the pair reflect on Ghana Studies @20 by discussing some of the achievements and challenges of their tenure as editors of the journal between 2008 and 2013. In what is sure to become a go-to reference piece, Kate Skinner offers a stellar retrospective analysis of scholarship on women and gender in Ghana and the ways that it has intersected with and diverged from broader trends in African Studies and Gender and Women's Studies. While work on gender has also been prominent in Ghana Studies, "specifically historical" research on gender, as Skinner shows, has not been as well represented in our pages. Her essay is surely a call to historians of women, gender, and sexuality in Ghana to think of Ghana Studies as a home for their research.

Our special forum then turns to the thirtieth anniversary of the Ghana Studies Association. Elisa Prosperetti offers a fascinating analysis of the "Ivorian origins" of our predecessor, the Akan Studies Council, and in the process reminds us that our intellectual commitments as an organization were from the very beginning transnational in scope. Past GSA presidents Dennis Laumann and Ben Talton, and current GSA president, Nana Akua Anyidoho, round out our forum with their reflections on the work they have done to grow the GSA's membership, to cultivate a dynamic intellectual community, and to foster enduring interpersonal and institutional relationships among Ghana Studies scholars across the globe.

Volume 21's "From the GS Vaults" features Edmund Abaka's pioneering article "'Eating Kola': The Pharmacological and Therapeutic Significance of Kola Nuts" from the journal's 1998 inaugural volume. We thought it especially fitting for this anniversary issue to invite Abaka to reflect on his article twenty years later. His comments are accompanied by those of Abena Dove Osseo-Asare, who thoughtfully reflects on the significance of "Eating Kola" for her own award-winning research. Moving forward, we would like to see these comment pieces become a permanent feature of "From the GS Vaults."

Sandra Greene's review of Karen Lauterbach's Christianity, Wealth, and Spiritual Power in Ghana, and Sean Reid's review of Kwame Essien's Brazilian-African Diaspora in Ghana: The Tabom, Slavery, Dissonance of Memory, Identity, and Locating Home bring the volume to a close.

Help us to ensure that the next twenty years of Ghana Studies are as intellectually rich and diverse as the first twenty by submitting your work to us.