Patricia Daley, our Vice Principal, Equality & Diversity Fellow and Professor of the Human Geography of Africa at the University of Oxford, has been included on the influential Powerlist Magazine’s Black Powerlist 2021, announced today.
The annual Powerlist, which is created in partnership with JP Morgan, focused this year on honouring people who have used their position to positive effect at a time of increased debate about racial injustice, its publisher said. Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton was named the most influential black person in Britain, followed by Professor Kevin Fenton, Regional Director for London at Public Health England, the historian David Olusoga and head of the Royal College of Nursing, Donna Kinnair.
Of her inclusion, Patricia said, “I am surprised, nevertheless, appreciative since inclusion gives recognition to my commitment to research and teaching in geography, and to my equality work within the college and university.”
Patricia joined Jesus College in 1991 as Helen Morag Fellow and Tutor in Geography. Her research interests include the political economy of population migration and settlement (forced migration, identity politics and citizenship), and the intersection of space, gender, militarism, sexual violence and peace (feminist geo-politics). Throughout her academic career, she has championed the complex issues around racial discrimination and inequality. She co-founded the Oxford University Black and Minority Ethnic staff network and chairs Jesus’ Equality & Diversity Committee. In 2014, she received the James Blaut Award from the Socialist and Critical Geography Speciality Group of the Association of American Geographers in recognition of her commitment to the engagement of scholarship with activism.
She has been invited to give several keynote lectures in Europe, North America and Africa, including at the service for UNESCO’s International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Legacy (London, 2018) and at the African Studies Institute of the University of Ghana at Legon, Accra (2016). 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 (2013).
Patricia has also spoken at numerous 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. She was also a consultant for an internationally-screened documentary film on the genocide in Rwanda (Rwanda: The Forgotten Tribe).
In the Powerlist 2021 category Public, Third Sector and Education, she is joined (amongst others) by Sonita Alleyne OBE, Master of Jesus College Cambridge, and Professor Funmi Olonisakin, Professor of Security, Leadership and Development at King’s College London; Founding Director of African Leadership Centre.
Watch Patricia’s recent Black History Month interview about her life and career here.