Jonathan Roberts

Jonathan Roberts is an Associate Professor of History at Mount Saint Vincent University specializing in the history of medicine and religion in West Africa. He holds a BA and MA from McGill University and a PhD from Dalhousie University. His research emphasizes medical pluralism, pandemic history, and heritage tourism controversies in Ghana. Roberts is the author of Sharing the Burden of Sickness: A History of Healing and Medicine in Accra (2021) and co-host of the Pandemics Past and Present podcast (2020).

His teaching includes courses on plagues and peoples, food history, and African heritage studies. Roberts has conducted extensive research in Ghana, examining topics such as malaria control during WWII, witchcraft accusations, and the contested commercialization of slave castles. His work advocates for transparent pandemic communication to prevent scapegoating and misinformation.

Key research themes include: medical pluralism in urban West Africa; colonial and postcolonial health systems; the intersection of religion and healing practices; and critical tourism studies focusing on Ghana’s historical sites.

Recent projects explore the history of parasitic disease eradication programs in the Caribbean and environmental aesthetics in African national parks. Roberts collaborates with international scholars and has published in Ghana Studies, African Studies Review, and the Canadian Journal of African Studies.