Published August 29, 2024
In memoriam of Evans Atuick
Evans Akangyelewon Atuick, PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at the University at Buffalo, died of malaria on July 20, 2024, in his native Ghana, where he was carrying out ethnographic research for his dissertation entitled "Witchcraft Camps and the Body Politics of Humanitarian Governance in Northern Ghana." He is survived by two daughters, ages 9 and 16.
Evans was born in the town of Wiaga in the Builsa District of the Upper East Region of Ghana on April 7, 1978, and was a member of the Bulsa ethnic group. In 2018 he came to the United States to pursue his master’s degree at the University of Wyoming under the supervision of Dr. Marcus Watson, a Buffalo native and long-time mentor of Evans. In 2015, Atuick and Watson co-authored the article “Cell Phones and Alienation among Bulsa of Ghana’s Upper East Region: ‘The Call Calls You Away,’” appeared in “African Studies Review.” Coinciding with Dr. Watson’s hire at the Department of Africana Studies at Buffalo State, Evans moved to Buffalo to join the PhD program in the UB Department of the Anthropology. At UB, he worked under the co-supervision of Dr. Mariella Bacigalupo and Dr. Frederick Klaits. His dissertation project aimed to analyze how concerns about witchcraft shape the sociality, conviviality, and body politics of humanitarian workers who implement biopolitical interventions in Northern Ghana. In 2024 he was awarded a Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant to complete his research, the most prestigious pre-doctoral grant in cultural anthropology.
All of those who had the fortune to meet him in the department know that Evans was an enthusiastic and bright student and an endearing human being. His advisors and the professors who had him as a teaching assistant describe him as brilliant, kind, funny, insightful and charismatic and remember him as a devoted father. He will be dearly missed.