Donna Patterson, Ph.D

Donna A. Patterson is Assistant Professor in the Department of Africana Studies at Wellesley College. She specializes in Francophone Africa, African-Atlantic exchange, health, and gender.

Her manuscript draft, Gender, Power, and Professionalization: Pharmacists in Twentieth Century Senegal, examines the emergence and expansion of African medical professionalization between 1918 and 2000. The work explores the growth of the African biomedical industry, African access to French systems, and the training of doctors, pharmacists, and midwives. It also considers the origins and expansion of African-owned pharmacies in colonial and postcolonial Senegal.

Patterson has also begun work on a project that looks at African-American pharmacists in New Orleans between 1890 and 1970. In this work, she presents pharmacists as a site for analyzing health care in New Orleans by chronicling how race greatly impacted the pharmaceutical sector during segregation and the early post-segregation period.

A recipient of fellowships and awards from Fulbright, American Historical Association, UNCF/Mellon, and Foreign LanguageArea Studies (FLAS), Patterson has also received fellowships from Princeton University and the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. She received her Ph.D. in African history from Indiana University.