We are delighted to share the news that Patricia Daley, Professor of the Human Geography of Africa at the University of Oxford and Helen Morag Fellow and Tutor in Geography at Jesus College, has been awarded a Fellowship by the Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS).

The Academy’s Fellowship is made up of distinguished individuals from academic, public, private and third sectors, across the full breadth of the social sciences. Through leadership, scholarship, applied research, policymaking, and practice, they have helped to deepen the understanding of, and address, some of the toughest challenges facing our society and the world.

New Fellows are recognised, after an independent peer review process, for the excellence and impact of their work and their wider contributions to the social sciences for public benefit

Patricia, whose academic research focuses on forced migration, political ecology and Africa, joins a number of leading social scientists from a wide range of organisations who have been conferred to the Academy this autumn. These include Mr Iain Bell, National Director for Public Health Data, Knowledge and Research at Public Health Wales, and Baroness Minouche Shafik DBE, Director, London School of Economics and Political Science.

The AcSS said, “Collectively, the new Fellows that have been conferred demonstrate the breadth of contributions the social sciences make to our political, social, economic lives. We are also pleased to have seen an increase in the diversity of nominations being put forward, both in terms of the BAME community and institutional affiliations.”

Will Hutton, President of the Academy of Social Sciences, said, “As the Academy extends its outward-facing focus, engagement with all sectors of the social science community is vitally important and I very much hope to draw on the deep knowledge and expertise of our new Fellows.”

Patricia’s principal research covers three areas of interest; firstly, on contemporary forced migration and its relationship with identity politics, especially ethnicity, gender and citizenship; secondly, how feminist geopolitics, critical race theory, and African feminist thought can together illuminate the ways in which race, gender, militarism, and violence intersect across transnational space and identify the potentialities for peaceful co-existence arising from alternative non-western centric ontologies; and thirdly, the relationship between conservation, resource extraction, and rural livelihoods within a political ecology framework. The geographical loci of her research are East and Central Africa, and the UK.

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 more recently in 2018, as a panellist at the British Film Institute post-film discussions of The Past is not the Future: Walter Rodney Student Years and The Young Marx. She has commentated on African politics on Al Jazeera and the BBC World Service.

Her current voluntary work includes membership of the Independent Advisory Group on Country Information of the Independent Chief Inspector of Border and Immigration, 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 engagement includes being a Member of Council & Trustee of the British Academy Institute in Eastern Africa (2012 –2016) and a Committee Member and Equality Officer for the Oxford Branch of the University College Union.

Patricia is a former Vice-Principal of Jesus College (2017-21) and chairs the College’s Equality and Diversity Committee.

Read more about Patricia’s career and research here.