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Dr Kofi Marfo, Founding Director of the Institute for Human Development,
Aga Khan University
Dr Marfo received his PhD and MEd degrees from the University of Alberta, Canada, after
completing his BEd (Hons) degree from the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. Prior to joining
AKU, he was Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of South Florida, Tampa,
where he served in a variety of roles: as Professor and Director of the Doctoral Programme in
Special Education, Director of an Interdisciplinary Post-Doctoral Fellowship Programme in AtRisk Populations and School Restructuring, and, for seven years, as founding Director of the
Center for Research on Children’s Development and Learning. Prior to his appointment at USF
in 1992, Dr Marfo held research and academic positions at the University of Cape Coast, the
University of Alberta, Memorial University of Newfoundland, and Kent State University.
Author of over 80 journal articles and book chapters and editor/co-editor of four books, Dr
Marfo’s scholarship in the areas of parent-child interaction, early intervention, childhood
disability, and early childhood development has been cited in over 180 different journals
spanning the fields of education, psychology, developmental medicine, child psychiatry, family
studies, rehabilitation science, social work, and the speech, language, and hearing sciences. In
recent years, Dr Marfo has been committed to child development research capacity enhancement
in Africa, including the mentoring of early career scholars. He was co-convener of the
Invitational Conference on Strengthening Africa's Contributions to Child Development Research
funded in 2008 by the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD).
A recipient of the Canadian Association for Educational Psychology's G.M. Dunlop Award for
Best Doctoral Dissertation, Dr Marfo has been a US National Academy of Education Spencer
Fellow, a Zero to Three Irving B. Harris Mid-Career Leadership Fellow, and more recently a
Residential Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford
University. He currently serves on the Governing Council of the SRCD and on the Institute of
Medicine/National Academy of Science Forum on Investing in Young Children Globally.