Margery Perham

Dame Margery Freda Perham DCMG CBE FBA (6 September 1895 – 19 February 1982) was a British historian of, and writer on, African affairs.

[2] She was born in Bury, Lancashire, and educated at the School of S. Anne, Abbots Bromley and St Hugh's College, Oxford.

[4] In 1922, as a result of illness, she took a year’s leave, which she spent in Somaliland with her sister’s family, beginning her lifelong interest in the British African colonies.

[4] In 1939 she was appointed the first official and only woman fellow of the newly founded Nuffield College, Oxford,[5] and was also elected reader in colonial administration, a post she held until 1948.

[5] Historian Kenneth O. Morgan called these lectures "a powerful intellectual force" and "widely influential," especially in shaping the Labour Party's views on decolonisation.