Amalia Daché is an Afro-Cuban American scholar and associate professor of higher education at the University of Pennsylvania. Her experiences as a 1980s Mariel boatlift refugee and student navigating U.S. inner-city schools, community college, state college, and a private research-intensive university contribute to her lines of inquiry. Dr. Daché’s major research areas are postcolonial geographic contexts of higher education, Afro-Latina/o/x studies, community and student resistance, and the college-access experiences of African diasporic students and communities.

She is lead editor of Rise Up! Activism as Education, published in 2019 by Michigan State University Press. Her most recent article, “Bus-Riding from Barrio to College: A Qualitative Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Analysis,” appeared in The Journal of Higher Education in 2021. Dr. Daché engages in research within contested urban geographies, including Havana, Cuba; Cape Town, South Africa; and Ferguson, Missouri. She has won numerous awards and fellowships from the National Academy of Education, Spencer Foundation, Association for the Study of Higher Education, and The Rockefeller Institute.

Dr. Dache has appeared as an expert in film and national media outlets, including Spike Lee’s documentary Two Fists Up, Red Table Talk: The Estefans, MSNBC’s The ReidOut with Joy Reid, American Voices with Alicia Menendez, José Díaz-Balart Reports, Slate’s A Word with Jason Johnson podcast, NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday with Lulu Garcia-Navarro, #SOSCuba podcast with Enrique Santos, Black News Tonight with Marc Lamont Hill, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Politico, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Al Día.

Research Interests and Current Projects

In 2018–2019 in Havana, Dr. Daché conducted an ethnographic study of cultural memory through the educational histories of Havana’s Cubans. A number of features make Cuba an important site of inquiry for issues related to higher education access and global democracy, including that 70 percent of the country’s population is of African descent. Cuba’s history of aspiring toward a racial democracy during its colonial and postcolonial periods, and its political-economic revolutionary context, make this study an important contribution in the area of comparative and international education. Dr. Daché was awarded a 2020 University Research Foundation grant to extend her Cuba study to the United States, where she is exploring the educational histories of sea migrants, the 1990s balseros (rafters), and 1980s Mariel refugees. The combined project is titled “Mysteries at the Bottom of the Ocean: A Racial and Political Hemispheric Analysis of Education and Economic Mobility for Cuban Nationals and Refugees.”

Dr. Daché is also completing a mixed-method study, “Mapping Public Housing and Urban Higher Education Accessibility and Enrollment in Philadelphia,” which is her 2020 NAEd/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship project. In this study she is collaborating with a North Philadelphia Housing community that is both predominately Puerto Rican and Afrolatina/o/x to learn of their educational trajectories navigating the local landscape of Philadelphia.

Publications

Featured Books

Rise Up!: Activism as Education

Selected Publications

Dache, A. (2021). Bus-riding from barrio to college: A qualitative geographic information systems (GIS) analysis. The Journal of Higher Education.

Dache, A., Blue, J., Bovell, D., Miguest, D., Osifeso, S., & Tucux, F. (2021). A Calle decolonial hack: Afro-Latin theorizing of Philadelphia's spaces of learning and resistance. Teaching in Higher Education.

Dache, A., & McGuire, K. (2021). Coming back home to live and not die: A human geography of a working-class Black gay male navigating the U.S. higher education pipeline. Urban Education 56(6), 872–900.

Tachine, A., Patel, P., & Dache, A. (2021). Social location, intersectionality and reflexivity. International Journal for Qualitive Studies in Education.

Dache, A. (2019). Ferguson’s Black radical imagination and the scyborgs of community-student resistance. Review of Higher Education 42, 63–84.

Dache, A. (2019). Teaching a transnational ethic of Black Lives Matter: An AfroCubana Americana’s theory of Calle. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 32(9), 1094–1107.

Dache, A., Haywood, J., & Mislan, C. (2019). A badge of honor not shame: An AfroLatina theory of Black-imiento for higher education research. Journal of Negro Education 88(2), 130–145.

White, J. & Dache, A. (2019). “A lot of inner-city kids”: How financial aid policies and practices reflect the social field of color-blind racism at a community college urban campus. Community College Journal of Research and Practice 44(1), 15–29.

Reyes, M., Dache-Gerbino, A., Rios-Aguillar, C., Diel-Amen, R., & Gonzalez Canche, M. G. (2019). The ‘geography of opportunity’ in community colleges: The role of the local labor market in students’ decisions to persist and succeed. Community College Review 47(1), 31–52.

Dache-Gerbino, A. (2018). College desert and oasis: A critical geographic college access analysis of urban decline. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education 11(2), 97–116.

Dache-Gerbino, A., Kiyama, J. M., & Sapp, V.T. (2018). The dangling carrot: Proprietary institutions and lack of college choice for Latina students. Review of Higher Education, 42(1), 20–60.

Dache-Gerbino, A., Aguayo, D., Griffin, M., Hairston, S. L., Hamilton, C., Krause, C., Lane-Bonds, D., & Sweeney, H. (2018). (Re)imagined geographies: A critical geography and urban higher education class explores postcolonial spaces post-Ferguson. Research in Education, 104(1), 3–23.

Mislan, C., & Dache-Gerbino, A. (2018). The struggle for ‘our streets’: The digital and physical spatial politics of the Ferguson Movement. Social Movement Studies, 17(6), 676–696.

Mislan, C. & Dache-Gerbino, A. (2018). Not a Twitter revolution: Anti-neoliberal and antiracist resistance in the Ferguson Movement. International Journal of Communication, 12, 2622–2640.

Dache-Gerbino, A. (2017). Mapping the postcolonial across urban and suburban college access geographies. Equity and Excellence in Education, 50(4), 368–386.

Dache-Gerbino, A., & White, J. (2016). College students or criminals? A postcolonial geographic analysis of the social field of whiteness at an urban community college branch campus and suburban main campus. Community College Review, 44(1), 49–69.

Kiyama, J. M., Harris, D. M., & Dache-Gerbino, A. (2016). Fighting for respeto: Latina stories of resistance shaping educational opportunities. Teachers College Record, 118, 120301, 1–50.

Sapp, V. T., Kiyama, J. M., & Dache-Gerbino, A. (2016). Against all odds: Latinas activate agency to secure access to college. NASPA Journal of Women in Higher Education, 9(1), 39–55.

News & Media

Penn GSE News

Panel Addresses the Future of Higher Education

What can institutions do to help students make informed choices about higher education? How can we make sense of skepticism surrounding cost, value, and return on investment? Four members of the Penn GSE community at the forefront of these changes spoke at a recent Penn Alumni panel event.

March 15, 2022

Amalia Daché discusses Cuba advocacy on Gloria Estefan's Red Table Talk

Amalia Daché, a Penn GSE professor and Cuban-American activist, talks about the invisibility of Black-led movements in Cuba on Red Table Talk: The Estefans.

October 14, 2021

What you need to know about the protests in Cuba

Penn GSE’s Amalia Daché has studied Afro Cuban life and educational opportunities under Cuba’s dictatorship. She says the world is seeing Afro Cubans’ frustration with the racist and classist society the regime maintains.

July 21, 2021

Four Penn students receive prestigious National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellowships

Higher Education assistant professor Amalia Daché received an NAED/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship.

June 15, 2020

In the Media

Detained protestors in Cuba detail torture amid trials

Amalia Daché spoke about the mistreatment of protesters in Cuba. “Cuba is a political apartheid. There is definitely racial discrimination happening in Cuba,” she said. “When Cuba gets a cold, Afro-Cubans get the flu, and they die.”

MSNBC | January 18, 2022

‘I have faith in what I cannot imagine, because I couldn’t have imagined what happened July 11’: Philadelphia Cubans on the hope, stress of island protests

Amalia Daché criticizes people who have blamed the U.S. embargo and not the Cuban government for the crisis in Cuba. “She was shocked to see how the U.S. media and Twitter were taking Afro-Cubans out of the narrative and blaming the U.S. and the CIA for the demonstrations,” she said.

The Philadelphia Inquirer | August 27, 2021

Afro-Cubans on the brink

Amalia Daché spoke with Politico about the uprisings in Cuba with respect to Afro-Cubans who are disproportionately affected by the hardships in Cuba and are taking the lead in the protests. “This is one of the reasons I’ve been so active, related to my research and my own identity as an Afro-Cuban, is that Afro-Cubans have been leading this from the beginning.”

Politico | July 30, 2021

Don’t Let Cuba’s Protest Momentum Evaporate

Amalia Daché writes, “The first thing the United States needs to do in crafting policy solutions is listen to the brave people risking their lives and freedom to lead these protests, especially Afro-Cubans who have lived at the bottom of the regime’s racist and classist system.”

Foreign Policy | July 30, 2021

Afro-Cubans come out in droves to protest government

Amalia Daché spoke about the history of racial disparities and injustices in Cuba. “When we're thinking about global solidarity with Black people, especially right now, we need all hands on deck,” she said.

“Weekend Edition,” NPR | July 25, 2021

A Word: Cuba’s Color Revolution

Amalia Daché joins podcast host Jason Johnson to talk about the uprising in Cuba, and the myths and realities of racial equity in Cuba.

Slate News | July 20, 2021

‘We need to focus on the Cuban people’s struggle’

Amalia Daché joins American Voices with Alicia Menendez to discuss the humanitarian crises fueling the movement in Cuba and explains why this moment is different from the past.

MSNBC | July 17, 2021

Fear of a Black Cuban planet

Amalia Daché was interviewed about Cuba’s recent uprisings and its long history of Black resistance. In the 1960s, the Communist government said it would eradicate racism. “It’s counterrevolutionary to talk about Black history in Cuba, to engage Black history,” she said.

Slate | July 17, 2021

Closing the gap—Philadelphia public schools lack Latinx teachers

Amalia Daché spoke about the importance of diverse educators. “Although I was successful at navigating higher education, not seeing or identifying with teachers always made me feel like I was an outlier,” she said.

Al Día | June 17, 2021

Journal Editorial Boards

The Journal of Higher Education

Associate Editor