Gérard Chouin

Bio

Gérard Chouin received his MA (Maîtrise) and MPhil (DEA) in African History from the University of Paris-I, Panthéon-Sorbonne, in 1992 and 1993, respectively. He served six years as a lecturer at the University of Ghana and at the University of Cape Coast before joining a PhD program in Anthropology/Historical Archaeology at Syracuse University as a Graduate Fellow. In 2001, he returned to Ghana for fieldwork and worked for another two years in the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Ghana. In 2004, he accepted a position as head of a cultural institute and teacher-training center in Enugu, Nigeria. He left in 2008 for The Gambia, where he served as head of an education cooperation project on behalf of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2009, he completed his dissertation on the history and archaeology of Southern Ghana. Subsequently, he accepted an appointment as Director of the French Institute for Research in Africa (IFRA-Nigeria) at the University of Ibadan from 2010 to 2013. In December 2013, he joined William and Mary to teach and research medieval and early modern African history. From Fall 2023 to Spring 2026, he was granted a leave of absence to work in Ghana as a heritage expert with Expertise France and the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board.

Research Interests

Professor Chouin is a historian and archaeologist with a strong interest in interdisciplinary research on West Africa’s deep past and longue durée. He combines archaeology, history, and environmental studies to examine urbanism, sacred landscapes, and long-term social change, with a particular focus on the Gulf of Guinea over the last millennium. As co-director of the Ife-Sungbo Archaeological Project, which focuses on settlements and monuments in medieval south-western Nigeria, he is deeply committed to advancing knowledge of West Africa’s historical complexities and its global connections. He has a long-standing interest in heritage conservation and public history, especially related to Ghana's built heritage of the Atlantic slave trade from the 15th to the 19th centuries, and Nigeria's medieval heritage .

Publications

Professor Chouin has authored several books and articles on seventeenth-century West Africa in the Atlantic world, with a special interest in editing and publishing pre-twentieth-century European source material. His current projects include an edition of Jean Godot’s unpublished account of a 1701 journey to West Africa and the correspondence of Marie-Joseph Bonnat from the Niger Delta, 1866-1868.

He also authored numerous articles on the archaeology and history of the Gulf of Guinea, focusing on pre-Atlantic and Atlantic Ghana and Nigeria. The general public can access most of his writings on earthworks , sacred groves, global health , African Archaeological archives, and the medieval site of Ile-Ife ( in open access at https://wm.academia.edu/GerardLFChouin and https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gerard-Chouin?ev=hdr_xprf

According to Academia.edu, 92 institutions in 36 countries and 76 journals cite his scholarship. More than 108,000 viewers accessed his publications, ranking him among the top 2% of the most-viewed scholars on the platform across all disciplines.

Public History

Professor Chouin's work in Nigeria has been featured in documentaries and educational videos. In partnership with French and Nigerian Institutions, he developed a 1600 sqm interpretation center at Ita Yemoo, Ile-Ife, where visitors can admire medieval stone and potsherd pavements and learn about the site through carefully curated posters and audiovisual material. In Ghana, he co-wrote the Sankofa II project funded by the European Union and implemented by Expertise France to support capacity building at the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board and improve the conservation and interpretation of Ghana's world heritage sites.