Dame Margery Freda Perham (1895-1982), a writer and lecturer on African affairs, was born in Bury, Lancashire, brought up in Harrogate, Yorkshire, and achieved an open scholarship to St. Hugh's College, Oxford, in 1914. In 1917, she was appointed Assistant Lecturer at Sheffield University. A lifelong preoccupation with Africa began in 1922 when she visited her sister in Somaliland. She returned to St. Hugh's in 1924 as official fellow and tutor in Modern History and in the School of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. In 1929, she accepted a year's travel grant by the Rhodes trustees to return to Africa, where she spent more than five years, travelling extensively. At the same time, she became actively involved in lobbying on the subject of colonial affairs, defending the High Commission Territories (Lesotho, Botswana, and Eswatini) and championing 'indirect rule'. In 1939, she became the first official, and female, fellow of Nuffield College in Oxford, and was also elected Reader in Colonial Administration, a post she held until 1948. Her teaching at this time was almost entirely devoted to the first and second Devonshire courses for colonial servants, though later she played a part in the development of universities for the new African leaders and experts, and helped in the initiation of the Oxford Colonial Records Project.

In Oxford, she became the nucleus and memoranda-writer for a group that secured government funds and asserted the University's role in colonial studies. Her books, reports, and papers provided the basis for the Oxford Institute of Colonial Studies, to which she was appointed Director, 1945-1948. She also helped plan the project which emerged as An African Survey. A study of problems arising in Africa south of the Sahara by Lord Hailey, etc. She was also a prolific broadcaster and correspondent on colonial matters. An honorary fellow of universities throughout Great Britain, and of Makerere in Kampala, Uganda. She was the first president of the African Studies Association and was appointed CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire), DCMG (Dame Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George), and FBA (Fellow of the British Academy).