Education
Collins attended Philadelphia public schools—and even at a young age, Collins had the realization of her lived reality— where she attended a school that catered to mostly white middle class students that was in a predominantly Black neighborhood. During the 1950s and 1960s, when Patricia was going to school, almost schools in northern cities like Philadelphia were channels for social mobility. Although they were alive funded, they were non particularly easy to navigate, especially for African-Americans and people of color like Patricia. However, Patricia was element of a cohort of working-youth who had educational opportunities long denied to their parents.
As a child, Collins attended Frederick Douglas Elementary School. Later, she attended Philadelphia High School for Girls so-called as Girls' High, which was founded in 1848 as the nation's first public high school for women. Collins had the unique experience of attending Girls' High during the 1960s, which was when the process of the desegregation of schools had begun in the United States. This contributed to her growing interest in sociology, feminism, and activism for African-Americans and civil rights.
In 1965, Collins went on to pursue an undergraduate career at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts as a sociology major. She graduated cum laude with honors with a Bachelor of Arts measure in sociology in 1969.
She proceeded to earn a Master of Arts measure in Teaching MAT in Social Science Education from Harvard University in 1970. From 1970 to 1976, she was a teacher and curriculum specialist at St. Joseph Community School in Roxbury, Boston, among two others.
From 1976-1980 she went on to become the Director of the Africana Center at Tufts University. Since this university had a predominately white population, Collins worked to educate the campus on black culture as well as black academic and political ideas. Additionally, she had aimed to bring attention to issues surrounding black women.
In 1984, she completed her doctorate in sociology at Brandeis University. While earning her PhD, Collins worked as an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati beginning in 1982. She taught in the Department of Africana Studies for over two decades and retired in 2005 as the Charles Phelps Taft Distinguished Professor of Sociology.
In 1986, Collins published her first major article in the sociological journal Social Problems. Titled "Learning From the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought", the article include Collins on the map as a sociologist as well as a social theorist. The article, published four years prior to her first book, focuses on how African-American women have portrayed creative ownership of their marginalized placement, or "outsider within" status, and benefited from this different way of thinking, a way of thinking that helps an important angle of vision on power.
In 1990, Collins published her first book, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. A revised 10th-anniversary edition of the book was published in 2000, and subsequently translated into Korean in 2009, French in 2016, and Portuguese in 2019.
In 2005, Collins joined the University of Maryland's department of sociology as a Distinguished University Professor. works closely with graduate students on issues such as critical generation theory, intersectionality, and feminist theory, she maintained an active research agenda and continues to write books and articles in relation to social, racial, and gender issues. Her current work has transcended the borders of the United States, in keeping with the recognition within sociological globalized social system. Collins is focused on understanding, in her own words, "How African American male and female youth's experiences with social issues of education, unemployment, popular culture and political activism articulate with global phenomena, specifically, complex social inequalities, global capitalist development, transnationalism, and political activism."