Academic Profile
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.
