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.

Current Research

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.

Teaching

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

Jelani Munroe

Can austerity transform the public sector and services for its citizens? Lessons from Jamaica and the IMF since 2010

Recent Graduate Research Students (since 2006)

Simphiwe Laura Stewart
Completed DPhil in 2023

A comparative political geography of populism: the rise of the EFF (in South Africa) and the Rassemblement National (in France) 1990 - 2019.

Hanno Brankamp
Completed DPhil in 2020

Policing the camp: Refugees and the geographies of humanitarian enforcement in Kenya

Nina Doering
Completed DPhil in 2019

Public participation, democratic decision-making, and extractive resource management in Greenland

Alexander Eduful
Completed DPhil in 2019

Neoliberalism, urban development and Accra's (Ghana) shopping malls as new spaces of urban consumption

Negar Elodie Behzadi
Completed DPhil in 2018

Gendered coal struggles at the margins: the working lives of men, women and children in Soviet and post-Soviet Tajikistan

Rowan Popplewell
Completed DPhil in 2017

Creating spaces for peace? Civil society, political space and peacebuilding in post-war Burundi

Adam Elliott-Cooper
Completed DPhil in 2016

The Struggle that has No Name: Policing, space and community resistance in neoliberal Britain

Kerrie Thornhill
Completed DPhil in 2016

Reconstructed meanings of gender violence in postwar Liberia

Andrea Purdekova
Completed in 2011
Political projects of unity in divided communities: discourse and performance of Ubumwe in post-genocide Rwanda (Registered in Development Studies)
Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon
Completed in 2011
Displacing AIDS: therapeutic transitions in Northern Uganda (Registered in Department for International Development)

Selected Publications

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Books

Journal Articles

Book Chapters

  • Daley, P. (2021) The 'post-conflict state' in Africa: Challenging the continued normalization of genocidal violence. In, Al Frankowski, Jeanine Ntihirageza, and Chi Eze (eds.) Critical Perspectives on African Genocide: Memory, Silence and Anti-Black Political Violence. Rowman and Littlefield International.
  • Daley, P. (2021) Towards and anti-racist humanitarianism in a post-liberal world. In, Firor, J., Espada, F., Rigon, A., Taithe, B. and Zakaria, R. (eds.) Amidst the Debris: Humanitarianism and the End of the Liberal Order. .
  • Daley, P. (2020) Black women academics: Politics of representation and community activism in the African diaspora. In, Jan Etienne (ed.) Communities of Activism: Black Women, Higher Education and the Politics of Representation. UCL Institute of Education Press, London.
  • Daley, P. (2018) Reparations in the Space of the University in the Wake of Rhodes Must Fall. In, Kwoba, B., Nylander, O., Chantiluke, R. and Nkopo, A. (eds.) Rhodes Must Fall: The Struggle to Decolonise the Racist Heart of Empire. Zed Press. ISBN: 9781786993908.
  • Daley, P. (2018) Reparations in the Space of the University in the Wake of Rhodes Must Fall. In, Kwoba, B., Nylander, O., Chantiluke, R. and Nkopo, A. (eds.) Rhodes Must Fall: The Struggle to Decolonise the Racist Heart of Empire. Zed Press. ISBN: 9781786993908..
  • Daley, P. (2018) Thomas Sankara and Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem: The Untimely Deaths of Two New Generation African Visionaries. In, Murray, A. (ed.) A Certain Amount of Madness” The Life, Politics and Legacies of Thomas Sankara. Pluto Press.
  • Daley, P. (2018) ‘The post-conflict state in Africa: Challenging the continued normalization of genocidal violence’. In, Frankowski, A., Ntihirageza, J. and Eze, C. (eds.) Rethinking Genocide in Africa and the African Diaspora. .
  • Daley, P. (2017) Celebrities, Geo-economics, and Humanitarianism: The Significance of Racialized Hierarchies. In, Frei, N., Stahl, D and Wienke, A. (eds.) Human Rights and Humanitarian Intervention: Legitimizing the use of Force since the 1970s. Fritz Thyssen Stiftung: Wallstein Verlag, Gottingen.
  • Daley, P. (2015) 44.Researching sexual violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo: methodologies, ethics and the production of knowledge in an African warscape. Chapter 44 in, Coles, A., Gray, L. and Momsen, J. (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Development. Routledge.
  • Daley, P. (2015) Entangled Spatialities: Immigrants and Worker Citizens in the United Kingdom. In, Anderson, B. and Hughes, V. (eds.) Citizenship and its Others. Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Daley, P. (2014) Unearthing the local: hegemony and peace discourses in Central Africa. In, McConnell, F., Megoran, N. and Williams, P. (eds.) The Geographies of Peace. I.B. Tauris, London. pp. 66-86. ISBN: 9781780761435.
  • Daley, P. (2013) Burundi. In, African Studies, Oxford Bibliographies Online. .
  • Daley, P. (2013) The Burundi peace negotiations: An African experience of peace-making in the era of neo-liberalism. In, Abrahamsen, R. (ed.) Conflict and Security in Africa. James Currey, Woodbridge. pp. 108-126. ISBN: 9781847010780.
  • Daley, P. (2009) Rwanda and Burundi since 1994: an end to the discriminatory state. In, Mustapha, A.R. and Whitfield, L. (eds.) Turning Points in African Democracy. James Currey, Woodbridge, Suffolk. pp. 167-184. ISBN: 9781847013170.
  • Daley, P. (2001) Population displacement and the humanitarian aid regime: the experience of refugees in East Africa. In, de Bruijn, M., Van Dijk, R. and D. Foeken (eds.) Mobile Africa: Changing Patterns of movement in Africa and beyond. Brill, Leiden.

Other Publications

Conference Papers

Papers presented at Seminars and Conferences
  • Invited Annual Lecture, Geography Department, Leicester University. December 2018
  • Invited Keynote: UNESCO's International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Legacy, City Hall, London. August 2018
  • ‘Fahamu’s Activism and Scholarship’. African Studies, Cambridge University. February 2018.
  • ‘Black Women Academics: Politics of Representation and Community Activism in the African Diaspora’. Birkbeck College, London. February 2018
  • ‘Pan-African Solidarity: Lessons for enacting global citizenship from the margins’. Africa Liberation Day Talk. Birmingham. May 2017
  • ‘Decolonizing Geographical knowledge’, AAG Boston, USA, and at a workshop at Clark University, Worcester. Mass. April 2017.
  • ‘#AllAfricanlivesMatter: Race, Gender, and the Relevance of Global Pan-African Solidarity in the 21st Century’, Invited seminar presentation at the African Studies Institute of the University of Ghana at Legon, Accra. November 2016
  • ‘Taking situatedness in knowledge production seriously: Building the foundations of a 21st century scientific and technical knowledge renaissance in Africa’, at 26th Annual Research, Community Engagement and Technology Transfer Conference (June 24 &25, 2016), University of Gondar, Ethiopia. June 2016
  • ‘Decolonizing the mind: Writing for Africa’ at the Workshop: Setting Forth at Dawn: Reflections on Setting Forth at Dawn: A Workshop on the Geopolitics and Practices of Academic Writing, Jimma University, Ethiopia. May 2016.
  • ‘Harmless research’ in violent spaces: An examination of research on sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo’, paper presented at 9th Pan-European Conference on International Relations, Sicily. September 2015.
  • ‘Celebrities, geo-economics, and humanitarianism: The significance of racialized Hierarchies’, presented at Workshop on Human Rights and Humanitarian Interventions Workshop, Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, Köln. June 2015.
  • ‘Roundtable: Centering local voices in research on violence’, co-organizer and participant, Annual Conference of the American African Studies Association, Indianapolis. November 2014.
  • ‘Gender and Genocide in Burundi’, Keynote lecture, Genocide Research Group, North-Eastern Illinois University, Chicago, Illinois. November 2014.
  • ‘Gender, race and neo-liberal globalization: What’s next for black feminist thought’, Socialist and Critical Geography Speciality Group, The James Blaut Memorial Lecture, AAG, Tampa. April 2014.
  • ‘Gender, race and neoliberal globalization: What’s next for black feminist thought’, Special Anniversary Lecture II, International Gender Studies, University of Oxford. March 2014
  • 'Problematizing the International discourse on sexual violence and displacement in Central Africa'. Keynote address, Center for Refugees Studies, York University, Toronto. November 2013.
  • 'Researching Sexual Violence in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo: Methodologies, Ethics, and the Production of Knowledge in Central Africa'. Paper presented at Queens University, Kingston, Ontario.November 2013.
  • 'Researching Sexual Violence in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo: Methodologies, Ethics, and the Production of Knowledge in Central Africa'. Paper given at the Annual meeting of the Royal Geographical Society and Institute of British Geographers. August 2013.
  • 'Pan-Africanism and African Renaissance in the 21st Century'. Invited participant at conference on UNECA/African Union, Addis Ababa. May 2013.
  • 'Problematizing the International discourse on sexual violence in Africa', paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Los Angeles. April 2013.
  • 'Pan-Africanism and the Diaspora', High Level Roundtable/Colloquium on the theme: Democracy, Governance and the Pan-African Idea: Whither Africa?' Invited speaker, UNECA, Addis Ababa. May 2012.
  • 'Rescuing Africans: Celebrity and humanitarianism', paper given at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, New York, February 2012.
  • 'African Sexualities'. Panel organizer & discussant: African Studies Association USA, Washington DC, November 2011.
  • 'Militarism, Gender and Peace in Central Africa', Geography Department, Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Munich, Germany. Invited Seminar Presentation. July 2011.
  • 'Pan-Africanism and Resistance: Beyond the Humanitarian Bondage', African Studies Association USA, San Francisco. November 2010.
  • 'The Challenges to Peace-Building in Post-Conflict Africa: Perspectives from Burundi', paper presented to Oxford Central Africa Forum, University of Oxford. Oxford 2010.
  • 'The challenges to peace in Burundi'. Invited seminar presentation: at SIDA in Stockholm, organized by the Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Uppsala, Sweden. May 2010.
  • 'Whither the Refugee?: The State, Humanitarianism, and Refugees in Central Africa', Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford. Seminar Presentation. March 2010.
  • 'Hierarchies of Power, Race and Gender: Towards an understanding of genocidal violence in Africa'. Invited seminar presentation, Development Studies Department, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. January 2010.
  • 'African Reconstruction in a New Age'. Afronomics Summit: New Models of Economics and Development in Africa, London. Invited Keynote Speaker, African Development Forum, Mary Sumner House, London. September 2009.
  • 'Rethinking Peace Building in Africa', Invited panel discussant at workshop, Cambridge University. March 2009.
  • 'Race, Space and Scale: Rethinking Security and Violence in Burundi', paper presented at Conference on Violence and the Body, University of Oxford, May 2007.
  • 'The Hierarchical Geographies of Peace and Security: Neo-liberal Post-War Reconstruction in Burundi', Association of American Geographers Annual Conference, 21 April 2007, San Francisco.
  • 'Power, Space and Biopolitics: An Anatomy of Violence in Burundi', African studies seminar, University of Oxford, 22 January 2007.
  • 'Beyond the liberal Peace: Conflict Resolution in Burundi', Seminar paper presented at School of International Relations, St. Andrews University, October 2006.
  • 'Great Lakes: Peacekeeping and Peace-Building Challenges', seminar paper presented at workshop on African Security & Peacekeeping in Complex Political Emergencies, Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, 24-28 October 2005.
  • 'Militarism, Masculinity and Violence in Central Africa: Towards an Understanding of Conflict in Burundi', paper presented at St Antony's College, 29 June 2005.
  • 'What are the prospects for peace and an end to genocidal violence in Burundi', paper presented at North-East Africa seminar, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Oxford, June 2005.
  • 'Great Lakes: Challenges to Peacekeeping and Peace-Building', seminar paper presented at Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, 26 October 2004.
  • 'Negotiating ethnicity in post-conflict Burundi', paper presented at the Association of American Geographers Annual Conference, March 2004, Philadelphia.
  • 'Ethnic Challenge to the African State, the Case of Burundi', Invited keynote speaker to the CODESRIA Governance Institute, Dakar, Senegal, August 2002.
  • 'Spatialities of Forced Migration: geography's contribution', paper presented at the departmental seminar series, Syracuse University, New York State, March 2001.
  • 'Population, Displacement and the Humanitarian Aid regime: The Experience of Refugees in East Africa', at conference on Moving People: Trends in Population Mobility in Africa, African Studies Centre, University of Leiden, June 2000.
  • Displacement and Marginality: African Refugees in the 21st Century, Sam Nolutshungu Memorial Lecture, Human Sciences Resources Council, Democracy and Governance, Pretoria, South Africa, April 2000.