Tometi Gbedema

Tometi Gbedema currently serves as a lecturer in the African American & African Studies (AAS) Department. He has worked at the Yolo County Elections Office in Woodland, California, and served as a Community & Regional Development (CRD) lecturer at UC Davis from 2012 to 2017. He was employed as an Associate Instructor with the African American & African Studies (AAS) Program, and taught AAS classes before becoming a lecturer at UC Davis. As an adjunct faculty, he lectured world regional Geography and human and physical Geography courses at Sonoma State University (SSU) in Rohnert Park (2016), California State University (CSU) Stanislaus in Turlock and Stockton (2017 and 2019), and at Contra Costa Community College, San Pablo, in 2016.

In summer 2017, he led a group of seven (7) SSU students on a Study Abroad Program to Ghana, West Africa. He designed, developed, wrote, proposed and negotiated this program with the SSU authorities. He spent two weeks with his students in Ghana touring the “must-see” slave forts and world heritage sites, national forests, a monkey sanctuary, beautiful waterfalls, Accra Art Center, and Dr. WEB Du Bois’ Museum in Accra, a Deaf and Dumb school, etc. He helped his students to immerse in the Ghanaian/African traditions and culture, and took them to experience the rural village living in poor nations. Before moving to the US in 2000, he earned a BA degree in English and an MA degree in Translation with French and English as his working languages from Université du Bénin (UB) in Lomé, Togo. He taught English, Mathematics, Biology, History and Geography at private elementary and high schools, and English at Lycée de Baguida in Lomé after receiving his MA degree from UB. Gbedema was also employed as a translator-interpreter and served as an assistant manager at the EGK Bruce Translation Center in Lomé, West Africa.

At UC Davis, Gbedema received an MS in Community Development and a Ph.D. in Geography. His community services on the campus and involvement in graduate student activities, student recruitment, and support to students led to his honoring in 2005 with a UC Davis Community Service Award. His Ph.D. dissertation research focuses on tourism development. It’s drawn upon his living and experience in the US as a recent African immigrant and international graduate student at UC Davis. This work is centered on an extensive fieldwork at the world heritage sites of Elmina Castle, Cape Coast Castle, and Fort Prinzenstein at Keta, three "must see" slave forts built by European trading companies along the coastline of Ghana in the 17th and 18th centuries. This study examines Africa’s connection with the global world using the special dynamics of interactions between African American “roots” tourists and their local Ghanaian hosts at these world heritage sites. Gbedema’s Community Development MS thesis research work, conducted in Rio Vista, a small Californian city, focuses on natural resource development issues in local communities. This work has been published into a book titled “NIMBY: Natural Resources Development Issues – Tensions Behind Energy Resource Development, Growth and Preservation of Small-Town Values”. He has presented papers on his dissertation at the American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Conferences in the US, and in the UK. He was invited to present a paper on his work at Saxion University of Applied Sciences, and at a tourism conference at Wageningen University & Research Institute in the Netherlands in 2013. He has also published some papers.

Gbedema taught summer classes in Anthropology and served as the statewide program analyst for the University of California Leadership Excellence Through Advanced Degrees (UC LEADS) Program, Office of Graduate Studies, at the UC Davis from April 2010 to March 2014. He worked collaboratively with the program coordinators on the ten (10) UC campuses. From May 2017 to August 2018, he served as a project/policy analyst at the Office of Campus Community Relations (OCCR) under the Associate Executive Vice Chancellor (AEVC), Dr. Rahim Reed, working on STEM diversification programs, UC-HBCU Initiative, and matters of diversity, equity and inclusion. He's coached youth and high school soccer, played it throughout his life, and serves as a referee.