Isaac Sekyi Nana Mensah is a PhD student at the Department of History and recipient of the John Lax Memorial Graduate Fellowship. Isaac graduated Cum Laude at the University of Cape Coast in 2017, where he studied African Studies with a particular interest in History and Politics and later, an MA in African Studies in 2019 at the University of Ghana (Kwame Nkrumah’s Institute of African Studies). Isaac’s Master’s thesis titled “POPES’ COMPLICITIES IN THE ‘NEGRO’ SLAVE TRADE, 15TH CENTURY TO 19TH CENTURY” focused on the papacy’s role in the global trade of enslaved Africans. Papal bulls of the 15th Century and slave records from the archives of Georgetown University were used for this project.
Mr Mensah was the 2020-2022 recipient of the McKeown Fellowship at Columbia University in the city of New York. At Columbia, Isaac interrogated the plantation business of Jesuit slaveholders of Georgetown College (Georgetown University), shedding new light on the university’s complicated past with the slave trade, citing numerous cases where enslaved Africans were mortgaged to secure additional credit and loans from American banks. Isaac is expanding his research interest to understand the parallel development of the Atlantic Slave Trade and the emergence of modern financial institutions such as banking, insurance, and stock markets. Isaac was an IvyPlus Exchange Scholar at Yale University in Spring 2023.
Isaac grew up in the historical city of Cape Coast in Ghana. He is a 2x Volleyball Gold Medalist. He enjoys watching movies and listening to music.
