Dr Freda Owusu-Sekyere

Dr Owusu was awarded a PhD (Social Policy) by the Open University (2013) on the affective dimensions of financial remittances by UK senders to Ghana and Nigeria. That research builds on her enduring focus on the significance of the social contexts of financial decision making and innovation, and has been published, with Professor Yeates, in the peer-reviewed Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy, 35(2): 137-156.

https://doi.org/10.1080/21699763.2019.1593879.

With Professor Yeates, Freda produced a policy brief  (2017) on Ghana Beyond Aid: Calling on the Diaspora, 4 pages, Milton Keynes: The Open University.

In parallel, Freda has extensive experience of social and innovative personal finance, including 10 years in social fund management for impact in job creation and employment. She co-founded Credscope, an innovative credit-scoring platform for financial well-being. Freda has served as a non-executive director on the board of Positive Money, an international research and campaign organisation for financial justice, and is currently a member of the Stakeholder Advisory Panel of the Finance and Leasing Association. 

Freda has worked as an independent consultant with UNESCO in the 2023 and 2024 analyses of biennial periodic reports on Intangible Cultural Heritage of Arab states and Africa, with a focus on sustainable development.

As an independent research consultant, she is working with colleagues at the University of Hull's Data Science, AI and Modelling Centre (DAIM) on an academy funded project on AI literacy in the culture sector in Burkina Faso. 

Freda obtained a post-graduate certificate in Higher Education in 2012, and has earlier post-graduate certificate in Banking, together with Community Enterprise (MSt, University of Cambridge Judge Business School) and Information Science (MSc, City, University of London) degrees. Her Bachelor's degree is in Politics, Economics and Law from the University of Buckingham.

Dr Owusu's research interests include: the social and policy dimensions of financial innovation and financialisation of care; financial innovation for personal wellbeing; socio-economic aspects of cultural heritage; exploration of the regulatory and policy guardrails for ethical AI and personal finance.