An Afro-Cuban American scholar, Amalia Daché is an associate professor in the Higher Education Division. Her experiences as a Cuban refugee and student traversing U.S. educational systems—among them urban K–12 schools, community college, state college, and a private research-intensive university—inform her research and professional activities.

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, “Ferguson’s Black radical imagination and the scyborgs of community–student resistance,” appeared in The Review of Higher Education in 2019.

Dr. Daché was named a 2020 NAEd/Spencer Foundation Post-doctoral Fellow for her project, “Mapping Public Housing and Urban Higher Education Accessibility and Enrollment in Philadelphia.” In 2019, she completed Rockefeller Institute’s Richard P. Nathan Public Policy Fellowship where she conducted research on racial, transit, and economic factors inhibiting access to local postsecondary education in the Finger Lakes region of Upstate, New York. She received the Association for the Study of Higher Education’s (ASHE) Bobby Wright Dissertation of the Year award in 2014.

Research Interests and Current Projects

Dr. Daché engages in research within contested urban geographies, including Havana, Cuba; Cape Town, South Africa; and Ferguson, Missouri.

In Havana, Dr. Daché is conducting 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 U.S. The 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.”

In Cape Town, Dr. Daché studied the emergence of the student-led Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall movements at the University of Cape Town. And in Ferguson, Dr. Daché studied working-class Black resistance in the community, which led to the Concerned Student 1950 movement at the University of Missouri.

Publications

Featured Books

Rise Up!: Activism as Education

Selected Publications

Daché, A., Quaye, S. J., Linder, C., & McGuire, K. M. (Eds.). (2019, in press). Rise Up!: Activism as education. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press.

Daché, A. (2019). Ferguson’s Black radical imagination and the scyborgs of community–student resistance. Review of Higher Education. Special Issue: Activism in the ‘Woke’ Academy: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives.

Daché, A. (Accepted). Teaching a transnational ethic of Black Lives Matter: An AfroCubana Americana’s theory of Calle. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education (QSE). Special Issue: Resistance, Black liberation and the struggle for racial justice: Exploring the implications of #BlackLivesMatter on Postsecondary Research, Policy and Praxis.

White, J., & Daché, A. (in press). “All the inner-city kids”: Color-blind racism and financial-aid processes at an urban community college. Community College Journal of Research and Practice.

Daché, A., Haywood, J., & Mislan, C. (in press). A badge of honor not shame: An AfroLatina theory of Black-imiento for education research. Journal of Negro Education.

Reyes, M., Daché-Gerbino, A., Rios-Aguillar, C., Diel-Amen, R., & González Canché, M. (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.

Daché-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.

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

Daché-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.

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

Daché-Gerbino, A. (2016). College desert and oasis: A critical geographic college access analysis of urban decline. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education.

Daché-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., & Daché-Gerbino, A. (2016). Fighting for Respeto: Latina stories of resistance shaping educational opportunities. Teachers College Record, 118(12), 1–50.

Sapp, V. T., Kiyama, J. M., & Daché-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

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

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

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