Professor Patricia Daley

Professor Patricia Daley is Professor of the Human Geography of Africa. She is also the Helen Morag Fellow in Geography at Jesus College, Oxford, where she served as Vice-Principal from 2018 to 2021. She was the University Assessor (2015-2016) and co-founder of the Oxford University Black and Minority Ethnic staff network. She was elected to the University Council in 2021 and sits on the Education Committee and General Purposes Committee. She is also a member of the University’s Staff Employment Review Panels.

Her previous academic appointments were at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, Loughborough University and Pembroke College, Oxford. She has taught a range of human geography topics, as well as specialist courses on African societies and environments. At Jesus College she held the administrative offices of Tutor for Admissions (1999-2002) and Tutor for Women (1998-2004). She has sat on various College committees, including the Academic Committee, Disciplinary Panel, and the Accommodation, Catering and Conference Committee (ACC), and chaired the Staff Liaison Committee. As Vice-Principal, she chaired the Personnel and ACC committees and the Equality and Diversity Working Group.

She has been invited to give several keynote lectures in Europe, North America, and Africa. More recently, in December 2018, she gave the Annual Lecture in the Geography Department of Leicester University; on 22 August, the keynote address at the service for UNESCO's International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Legacy, City Hall, London; and, on November 2016, she gave an invited seminar at the African Studies Institute of the University of Ghana at Legon, Accra. As a consequence of her research on violence in Central Africa, she was invited to give a keynote lecture for the Genocide Research Group, North-Eastern Illinois University, Chicago; and a 25th Anniversary address at the Center for Refugees Studies, York University, Toronto in November 2013. Other invitations included presenting a paper at the High-Level Roundtable/Colloquium on Democracy, Governance and the Pan-African Idea: Whither Africa?’, at UNECA, Addis Ababa in May 2012, and as a participant at the conference on Pan-Africanism and African Renaissance in the 21st Century’ organized by UNECA/African Union, Addis Ababa, May 2013.

With respect to her interests in African political ecology, she was awarded an ESRC/NERC interdisciplinary seminar grant on African Environments (2005-2007). She chaired the African Environments Programme for the academic year 2006-7. In recognition of her commitment to the engagement of scholarship with activism, in 2014, she received the James Blaut Award from the Socialist and Critical Geography Speciality Group of the Association of American Geographers.

In addition to academic fora, Professor Daley speaks at community events, such as at the 2017 Africa Liberation Day in Birmingham; the 2018 Black History Month Windrush Celebrations in Barton, Oxford; and as part of the 2019 Windrush celebrations at the Museum of Oxford. Her media work includes acting as a consultant for an internationally-screened documentary film on the genocide in Rwanda (Rwanda: The Forgotten Tribe); and presenting her work at the 2021Cannes Film Festival organised by OKRE.org. She participated as a panellist at the British Film Institute post-film discussions of The Past is not the Future: Walter Rodney Student Years (2018); The Young Marx (2019) and The life and Legacy of Marcus Garvey (2022). She has commentated on African politics on Al Jazeera and the BBC World Service. In 2020 and 2021, Patricia was included on the Black Power List as one of the most influential Black persons in the UK.

Her current voluntary work includes membership of the of the Advisory Council of the Carnegie Africa Diaspora Fellowship Programme, and chair of the Board of Trustees for Fahamu Trust Ltd - a pan-African social justice movement building organization that publishes the online newsletter PambazukaNews. Previous community engagements include being a Member of Council and Trustee of the British Academy Institute in Eastern Africa (2012 –2016); member of Independent Advisory Group on Country Information of the Independent Chief Inspector of Border and Immigration; and a Committee Member and Equality Officer for the Oxford Branch of the University College Union.

Professor Daley is a co-editor of the journal Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space; the geography section editor of Routledge Encyclopaedia of African Studies; a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for the journal Gender, Place and Culture; a member of the interdisciplinary advisory board of the International Relations journal, St Antony's International Review; and a peer reviewer for a number of Geography and African Studies journals, including Political Geography, Third World Quarterly, CODESRIA, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, Journal of Southern African Studies, Journal of Refugee Studies, and the Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. She has also peer reviewed grants for the ESRC/DfID, NORFACE, SSRC, Leverhulme and British Academy.

Professor Daley’s principal research interests can be grouped under four themes: (1).The political economy of population migration and settlement (forced migration, identity politics and citizenship); (2) The intersection of space, gender, militarism, sexual violence and peace (feminist geo-politics); (3) Racial hierarchies and violence (geographies of racialization and coloniality using Critical Race Theory and decolonizing methodologies); (4) The relationship between conservation, resource extraction, and rural livelihoods (political ecology). The geographical loci of research are East and Central Africa, and the UK.

Research Projects

• Citizenship and Belonging in Tanzania
  The book project arising from this research is ‘Becoming Tanzanian: Burundian Refugees and Citizenship in Tanzania’ and is to be published by James Currey. The key task of the book is to explore how new networked relationships between global capitalism, international humanitarian assistance, and local political elites affect those who have been forcedly displaced and those considered to be indigenous citizens. The book questions the ability of external humanitarian agencies to finding lasting and humane solutions to refugee problems and shows how the shifting policy solutions promoted by the international community have contributed to the marginalization and securitization of former refugees and other mobile peoples in Africa.
• Black Body Politics: Social Hierarchies and Violence
  The project addresses the intersectionality of race, class and gender in Africa and the African diaspora, using sexual violence against black women as a means of exploring contemporary eugenics and genocidal practices. It examines the bio-political crises in contemporary Africa and the diaspora that arise out of intersecting insecurities and the social and moral deficit caused by neo-liberal capitalism.
• Global Africans: Decolonizing Geographies of Migration, Citizenship, and Marginality
  This project seeks to engage with Africans on the continent and in the diaspora on the spatial and scalar strategies they have developed to overcome marginality within the spaces in which they reside, even when they have formal citizenship; how they transcend constraining structures that perceive them as non-citizens - living within, but existing without. The project explores whether the African experience can offer insights into the multi-scalarity and problematic nature of citizenship and on the politics of belonging pertinent to the 21st century.

Undergraduate teaching

Professor Daley teaches on 'Borders and Migration and citizenship' for the Preliminary Examination; gives the Final Honour School core lectures on difference for the Space, Place and Society paper; on institutional subjects for the Geographical Thought paper; and on indigenous ontologies and community conservation for the Environmental Geography paper. She also teaches the option course 'African Societies', and delivers human geography tutorials for the core courses for Jesus College students.

Postgraduate teaching

Professor Daley teaches 'African Environments' elective (available to all Masters' students in the International Graduate School).

Current Graduate Research Students

Recent Graduate Research Students