Margery Who? A biography waiting to happen

Abstract

It is now almost 30 years since Dame Margery Perham, the internationally acknowledged academic expert on British colonial administration and a widely respected figure at Oxford University (Research Lecturer in Colonial Administration, 1935 and Reader 1939-48, Fellow in Imperial Government at Nuffield College, as well as being its first female Fellow, Director of the Institute of Colonial Studies and founding Director of the Oxford Colonial Records Project), died in 1982. Her work as research consultant to Lord Hailey and his team on the African Survey project (1938), her record of co-operation with the Colonial Office as a leading member of several of its committees including that set up to plan the post-war training of Colonial Service cadets (the Devonshire Courses) and her close links with a number of the new university colleges in the overseas territories, notably Makerere led to the award of the CBE in 1948.