PhD Defence: Amanda Haarman

In order to obtain the PhD degree, Amanda Haarman has submitted her thesis entitled:

Returnees and Change-Making:Entrepreneuring new narratives, aesthetics, and places in Ghana’s creative industries

Return migration to Ghana has gained growing policy, media, and scholarly attention for its widely celebrated potential to drive economic growth and job creation, often framed through narratives of returnees as “agents of development”. This dissertation examines how returnees themselves articulate and enact change beyond such paradigms, situating their ventures within shifting global imaginaries of Africa and the postcolonial cultural landscape of Ghana’s capital, Accra. Drawing on six months of qualitative fieldwork in the city’s creative industries and mobilizing concepts of entrepreneuring-as-emancipation, world-making, and place-making, the research shows how returnee entrepreneurship is oriented toward addressing colonial legacies, yet critique of these legacies often becomes entangled with complicity in reproducing them, as returnees navigate tensions between cultural authenticity and market demands, heritage and modernity. The dissertation advances an understanding of entrepreneuring as an inherently tension-ridden process and demonstrates that reclaiming cultural agency - beyond economic and developmental imperatives - is central to returnee-driven change.

The thesis will be available from research.cbs.dk

Primary Supervisor:

Associate Professor Thilde Langevang
Department of Management, Society and Communication
Copenhagen Business School 

Secondary Supervisors: 

Senior Researcher Nauja Kleist
Migration and Global Order
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) 

Assessment Committee:

Professor Dan Kärreman (Chair)
Department of Management, Society and Communication
Copenhagen Business School 

Professor Timon Beyes
Institute of Sociology and Cultural Organisation
Leuphana University Lüneburg 

Professor Pamela Kea
School of Global Studies
University of Sussex 

Date: 9 October 2025
Time: 13:00-15:00
Online: TEAMS

*Please note that the microphone and camera of all spectators must be turned off.

Location: Dalgas Have
Room: DH.Ø.0.74
Reception: Faculty Club (ground floor next to canteen)

*The CBS PhD School will host a reception, which will take place immediately after the defence.