Daniel Georges-Abeyie

Daniel Earl Georges-Abeyie (born April 6, 1948) is an American criminologist and professor in the Barbara Jordan - Mickey Leland School Of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas.

Early life and education Born in New York City, Georges-Abeyie is of West Indian and African American ancestry. His father was from the island of Tortola in the British West Indies, and his mother was a U.S. citizen from the Atlantic coast in the South. Both of his parents were escaped slaves, and his last name refers to both the plantation that his father's ancestor escaped from ("Georges") and the Fante word meaning "return when the time is right" ("Abeyie"). He received his B.A. in sociology from Hope College in 1965, his M.A. in sociology from the University of Connecticut in 1971, and his Ph.D. in cultural and political geography from Syracuse University in 1974. As a Ph.D. student, he was heavily inspired by the geographer James L. Newman, who remains his closest mentor and a personal friend. His most important mentor as a professor was Hans Toch. He received multiple awards for his work for AI, including the first Bruce Collmar Award in October 1997 and the Outstanding Amnesty Volunteer Award for the Western Region in 1996.

Research Georges-Abeyie's research focuses on a wide variety of topics, including arson, race and crime, and terrorism. He was also one of several researchers who disputed the "nondiscrimination thesis" posited by criminologist William Wilbanks in the late 1980s.